Need help resolving sound issues.
I have a HP Pavilion dv8000 notebook. It has windows XP home edition and an AMD 64 processor. I have had the same problem for a long time now relating to sound, here are the following symptoms:
1.Essentially my computer does not play sound or video correctly. It plays video at a slow rate and sound like it is a skipping CD.
2. Videos and music must download all the way before they will play without skipping. Example, a video on youtube must reach completeness before my computer can even think about playing it without skipping.
3. The speakers/sound quality is horrible! When I bought it the salesman convinced me it was a "multimedia" laptop. How can they get by with having such horrid sound?
4. The only time it will play sound is when the processor is running at around 5-20%. Anything over that and it just can't do it. This also leads to windows freezing if I try to do too many things at once.
5. I have completed a "destructive" quick restore several times. Each time this fixes my problem. However this sucess is completely temporary. The first time I did it it fixed it for almost a month, but it has had shorter results each time. I think I have done it a total of 5 times so far. And due to the decreasing results I do not plan on doing it again.
I was wondering if anyone else had this type of laptop and I was wondering if they could educate me in the likeness of HP because I'm not sure I understand why this thing is such a piece of trash. Or maybe if you could point mee in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.
Mods: I am placing this in both the hardware/software forums if its ok. I'm not sure which audience needs to hear my cries, thanks.
1.Essentially my computer does not play sound or video correctly. It plays video at a slow rate and sound like it is a skipping CD.
2. Videos and music must download all the way before they will play without skipping. Example, a video on youtube must reach completeness before my computer can even think about playing it without skipping.
3. The speakers/sound quality is horrible! When I bought it the salesman convinced me it was a "multimedia" laptop. How can they get by with having such horrid sound?
4. The only time it will play sound is when the processor is running at around 5-20%. Anything over that and it just can't do it. This also leads to windows freezing if I try to do too many things at once.
5. I have completed a "destructive" quick restore several times. Each time this fixes my problem. However this sucess is completely temporary. The first time I did it it fixed it for almost a month, but it has had shorter results each time. I think I have done it a total of 5 times so far. And due to the decreasing results I do not plan on doing it again.
I was wondering if anyone else had this type of laptop and I was wondering if they could educate me in the likeness of HP because I'm not sure I understand why this thing is such a piece of trash. Or maybe if you could point mee in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.
Mods: I am placing this in both the hardware/software forums if its ok. I'm not sure which audience needs to hear my cries, thanks.
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Comments
LOL, I'm a mod and I'm not sure either! For now, we'll just go with one thread so we don't get confused trying to consolidate advice from two threads. Hope we can sort out the problem.
If you have 512 then you should have enough ram to run a few tasks and play sound and video back over the net though playing a DVD would mean that's about all it's going to be able to do at that time. If it's having issues with stuttering you may have a virus/spy-ware that is killing your speed and causing issues. If you have Norton, Macafee or any sort of bundled 'Internet Security Suite' this will also cause massive overhead on your machine that could cause it to chug along.
I would also suggest, after doing all your reinstalls that your HDD may be badly fragmented and to run a defrag. Also turn off the indexing service and right click on the properties for your HDD and remove any check marks from the drive indexing option - it's crippling the longer you have a machine, the worse it gets.
Lastly you may just need to get better codec's. Codec's are the secret decoder wheels of multi-media. The take the media file and determine the most efficient way to play it back. It's possible you have old codec's for the files you are trying, or a broken codec. I personally suggest
K-Lite Master codec pack, which you can obtain Here
However i notice that even startup sounds won't play properly, simple dings and what not upon starting windows are choppy too. Lame.
Thanks for the link.
I'm beginning to wonder if you are getting device conflicts that are conflicting with each other and causing hickups. Do you use any external usb devices or pcmcia cards? Try removing all of them and see if it keeps happening.
Also do the other things I mentioned about the defrag and the indexing.
Quick way to turn off indexing. Right click on start> Left click on Explore> Right click on your C: Drive> Left Click Properties> Under the General Tab at the bottom REMOVE the check mark beside 'Allow Indexing Service....'> Click Apply and when the box pops up tell it to do this to every file and folder on the machine. You'll also get the occasional pop up saying that a file is in use, tell it to just keep going. The entire process takes 5 - 15 mins depending on the machine and number of files.
Then when that finished go into Start> Run> type services.msc> That will bring up a list of the services on your machine. Scroll through the list find indexing> Right click on it> Left Click Stop if it's running> Right click again choose properties> Set startup type to Dissabled.
Indexing as you may have guess creates an index. It's an index of every file and folder on your machine. The only thing that uses this index is Microsofts search feature. Without the index is has to actually search your hard drive everytime you do a search. With the index is just reads in the index, making those searches faster.
The problem is that maintaining this index is surprisingly a big job for windows, given that there are tens of thousands of files on your machine. Removing the index means that everytime you make a file change the file doesn't have to be consulted to see if an index change needed. The bigger problem is that the index file can surprisingly easily become corrupt, especially if your computer hangs while doing any sort of file change.
Without the indexing service running. Everything but the search feature can see potential speed increases. Remember that this isn't only tracking file changes that you make, but if a game makes a change etc.... The downside is that you will see a marginally decreased response in doing Searches.
However, I just realized that playing anything off the internet is very choppy until after about 30 seconds when it finally planes off. Its not due to the connection speed, seeing as how no one elses computer on our same network does it. Its a standard comcast connection, fast enough to buffer quickly. I have to let whatever it is download completely and then play it. It will skip until it is downloaded and then continue to skip for aroun 30 seconds therefore after.
I almost know what this is, however I can't quite put my finger on it. Any ideas?
Another thing, if I were to have a question about an ipod which forum should I go to?
Next if you are doing any file sharing, specially torrents, while streaming audio they are going to hammer your internet connection, as well if any other computers on the network are file sharing your connection will be equally effected.
Now you mentioned that other computers on the network aren't being effected and they may not be if they are the ones sharing files. The trick is that whatever router you are connected to will give the bandwidth out to whomever is grabbing it first. So if you have 2 computers and one is file sharing and hammering the net pretty hard the router will give it priority. If you suddenly go to the net the router isn't smart enough (this can sometimes be fixed) to give you half the pipe. It'll just fit you in when it can.
Now if your router supports a service called QoS and some newer middle-high end routers do. You can setup QoS (Quality of Service) so that it won't let a specific connection saturate the network. I won't get into the specifics of setting up QoS as they are many and varied. But if you can eliminate all other issues it may be worth examining.
I decided I would go ahead and check for new audio drivers from the rather imperious and unwelcoming HP website, and subsequently found them. I just installed them restarted my computer, and have yet to test their effect on my performance.<br>
I am posting this reply because the driver install somehow fixed another less bothersome problem with desktop icon graphics - their shadows appeared as opaque blocks of the set background color, on top of the desktop image. They now work perfectly. How weird is that?<br>
Anyways, I wont know if the drivers fix my sound problem for some time, as the stuttering only occurs after the laptop has been running for some time.<br>
Kryyst- how to I become a bandwith prositute? I don't think this is my problem because I have used several different networks with the same effect on every one of them. However I may have something turned off which does not allow me to jocky for pole position so to speak.
Ok are you running any of those programs, Norton Internet Security Sweet, Macafee Security Sweet, Cogeco's Security Suite any sort of firewall etc...?