$5 PAYPAL TO FIRST PERSON WHO SOLVES THIS PROBLEM

[ddeder]

The problem has to be solved without adding or replacing any hardware. Installation of a different OS is out of the question. WIndows Media Player must be used.


THE PROBLEM:

I just built a new computer with a 1GHz Duron and the Biostar M7VKQ motherboard (which has onboard AC97 audio) and Windows XP Home. Everything appears to work just fine except for one small problem... In fact, most people would not even characterize this as a problem, but the person I built the computer for does.

The problem is this:

When I am just playing a midi file using Windows Media Player and not doing anything else, the music sounds fine. If I then open Internet Explorer and begin to scroll up and down on a webpage, the music starts slowing down and skipping beats. As soon as I stop scrolling, the music sounds good again. I noticed that the CPU usage soars when I begin scrolling on a webpage.

I have tried the following:

Stored the midi file on my hard drive and disconnected from the internet leaving the browser open. To see if the internet connection is somehow interfering. Problem still exists.

Added 256MB RAM to the machine for a total of 376MB + 8MB for integrated video. Problem still exists.

Inserted SoundBlaster 5.1 soundcard and disabled onboard audio. Problem still exists.

Tested using files with other audio formats (.wav, .asf, etc...). The problem only occurs when playing midi files.

Checked DirectX for problems. It says there are none.


Tested this on 8 other computers:

Athlon 1900+
Athlon 1700+
Athlon 1600+
Athlon 1.33GHz
Athlon 1.33GHz
Athlon 1.2GHz
Duron 1.0 GHz
Celeron 400MHz

Seven out of these eight computers did not experience this problem. The only one that did was the 1GHz Duron machine which. This machine has a Biostar M7VKS motherboard in it with integrated AC97 sound. Even the lowly 400MHz celeron machine with 64MB RAM and 8MB of integrated video worked just fine. All machines used Windows Media Player to play the file.

The other machines which had no problem use various motherboards, but they all have integrated onboard AC97 sound.

All tests were run with the same midi file.

The only thing I haven't tried yet is actually replacing the 1GHz Duron with a faster processor. I hesitate to do this since the slower celerons worked just fine.

The 1.33GHz Athlon computer uses the M7VKQ motherboard as well and has no problem.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be? I'm getting desperate...

THE PROBLEM WILL BE CONSIDERED SOLVED WHEN I CAN PLAY THE MIDI FILE AND SCROLL ANY WEBPAGE WITHOUT THE MUSIC BEING AFFECTED.

 

[corkyg]

What MIDI sound generator is your system using? Go into Conrteol Panel, Sound/Audio and check what MIDI device is selected as the generator. XP Works best with "Microsoft GS Wave Table SW Synth." It may be using a Sound Blaster synth and that can be part of the problem.

 

[ddeder]

It is using the default "Microsoft GS Wave Table SW Synth". When I installed the Soundblaster 5.1 card, I tried all of the Soundblaster devices and none worked. The Soundblaster card has now been removed and the onboard AC97 audio has been turned back on in the bios.

 

[SmirnoffIsTasty]

Weird, I just noticed that when I scroll with my intellimouse explorer 3.0 wheel it uses 100% of my CPU resources. I have an XP 1800 running on a Soyo K7V Dragon Plus.

 

[MrTux]

I had a similar problem with my old computer, except is was when I was listening to MP3s. Are all the computers running the same driver versions? You might want to look into that.

 

[Maggotry]

Remove everything in the "Sound" category of the device manager except for the creative labs entries.

 

[SmirnoffIsTasty]

It happens to me even when I am not playing anything.

 

[Mark R]

It sounds like a graphics card problem to me.

This problem was rife, about 4 or 5 years ago, as manufacturers of graphics cards were trying to maximize performance, even if it meant bending the rules of the PCI bus a bit.

What happened was that when the graphics card was busy, it would stall the PCI bus - so no data could be transferred from the CPU to the other cards (e.g. sound card - causing stuttering and break up).

What graphics are you using? - do you have the resources to test a different type of card?

 

[GiGoLo]

I had a similar experience with a celery 800 system using a mobo with integrated sound and video. Like Mark R said, this sound more like the video card causing the lag. Most onboard ac97 sound cards perform the same, however not all integrated video cards are alike. In the case of my celery system, if I browsed the web, tried to fast forward a song or video clip, or scrolled in my computer, my system would lag and if i had musci playing, would make the music skip as well. as soon as i used an agp video card instead (in this case, a 32mb tnt2 ultra), all the lag disappeared. you may want to try using an agp card (if there's an agp slot) or even a pci vid card for testing purposes.

 

[ddeder]

I thought it might be the video circuitry as well but one of the 1.33 Athlons uses the same board as the computer that has the problem. Is it possible that the faster CPU compensates for a problem with the board?

There is no AGP slot on the board of the computer in question. For testing purposes, I may be able to dig up an old PCI video card and see if that makes a difference (of course that means adding hardware).

WIll let you know what I find.

 

[Mingon]

power supply ? sounds strange i know but I had a similar problem which I traced via directx through to the graphics card and onto the powersupply

 

[mastertech01]

Are you using a USB mouse? You could try a PS/2 mouse to see if thats the problem.

 

[ddeder]

I am certain the PSU is not an issue. These are brand new Enlight 300W power supplies and it is happening on more than one machine. I am using a PS/2 mouse but that is not the problem as the behavior occurs even when scrolling with the keyboard (also PS/2).

I did pop in an old PCI video card and it appears to have made a difference. The distortion appears to still be there although it is not nearly as bad... Unfortunately, I do not have a nicer PCI video card to test with. I kind of wonder if a 64MB video card would make the problem go away entirely.

 

[dude]

Check to make sure DMA is enabled on the hard drive.

Check the bios to make sure IRQ is enabled for the Video.

 

[Twitty]

Wierd... Never noticed the 100% CPU usage when I scrolled until you brought it up. Checked it, and sure enough, every time I scroll the CPU usage goes thru the roof!

Sorry, no help on the problem at hand.

 

[spanky]

that happened to me too. problem solved after i installed sblive.

 

[MoMeanMugs]

I had this problem way back in 1997 when I got a Voodoo Rush. It is either your soundcard or your video card hogging the bus. Can you change your bus latencies in your BIOS? Which video card are you using? Also, turn off smooth scrolling in IE. That will help A LOT. Where is my 5 bones?

 

[Buk]

Try tweaking your soundcard - may not help but try it anyway. There is a tweak (I don't have the link) to increase the size of your soundcard DMA buffer with an entry/change to your system.ini file. Search for it on Google!

Good luck....................

 

[ddeder]

As I said before, this computer is using the Biostar M7VKQ motherboard which has onboard sound and 8MB integrated video. Installing a Soundblaster Live! card did not fix the problem. I have no idea how to change bus latencies in the bios. Perhaps you can give me further details. I will try turning off smooth scrolling and see if that works.

 

[ronach]

Your symptoms appears to be an IRQ sharing problem, click control panel, then system icon, then click computer, verify if your sound card is sharing an IRQ with another device or not. If it is then get it on it's own IRQ. If you don't know how to do that, then come back here for further assistance. ronach

 

[ddeder]

Ronach,

It looks like it is sharing an IRQ with a number of different things. I do not appear to have the option to change the IRQ within device manager. Is this something I should be able to do in the BIOS? Keep in mind, I am running Windows XP. I think your directions for finding the IRQ were for a Windows 95 or 98 system.

 

[ronach]

ddeder,

You are correct, I was referring to a win 98 install, sry about that, some people just don't rtfp huh. Anyhoo, I feel that your audio brd is being starved for bandwidth, aside from vid brds doing this, I've seen network brds do this as well. I would look for the PCI bus hog as others have suggested. Hopefully one of our Anandtech win XP gurus can come up with a troubleshooting technique that will be successful for you. Good luck. ronach

 

[ZZZZZZ]

Plug a sound card into an open slot, disable the onboard sound and your problem is solved. This is a common issue with the all in on MB,s. A descent add on sound card will precoess the sound itself and not rely on cpu cycles most of the time.
You are correct in the fact that a board with a faster CPU will display less of the symptoms because it has more cycles per second and you won't be able to hear the the delays in sound processing. Onchip cache helps a bit as well. It is not a problem, more like a result of demanding to much CPU time for a lower priority item like sound.

 

[JustinLerner]

If you disable the onboard audio and install a new sound card, the same IRQ will be used because the XP OS was installed using ACPI (according to your info.) The BIOS settings idea sounds interesting, but in my opinion, should be irrelevant since you are using a 1Ghz CPU and more than enough RAM.

So I guess your customer is viewing the statistics in Media player and seeing frames skipped or packets dropped as well as hearing it? Do you get the same response/results using something like the latest version of WinAmp? If the problem was with a codec or the system (like the soundcard or bus latencies), it should also affect WinAmp playback of midi files.

If the problem was onboard sound, then other setups with same board model # and CPU should have the same problem. (Maybe test this on the other system motherboard by switching CPU's and memory onto the other board and test.) If the problem occurs again this could be inconclusive to whether the CPU/board/memory/system OS is at fault, but could lead you to understand that this particular combination of components has this particular problem. Further troubleshooting and testing would be necessary or just replace components that conflict on the customer PC with comparable items (price/value/performance wise) and call it customer satisfaction.

I tried to duplicate your problem on two different PCs (components purchased and assembled by moi), both with Intel chipsets and Intel CPU's.
First I tried your setup on my 333A Celeron and 810E board, 128MB RAM (with on board video and sound) using Windows 2000.
Trying to duplicate your midi test setup while browsing the web (via another PC's ICS share) and rapidly, continuously scrolling the browser window with scrolling mouse buttons resulted in no problems. The mouse uses a PS/2 connector and USB to PS/2 because it's actually a Logitech USB Optical Wheel Mouse.
Resetting the mouse responses from 20 to 100 reports/second, there were still no problems (was 20 reports per second initially). Even when the CPU was up to 100% usage with extensive wheel rolling, the WinMediaPlayer 6 still played along without skipping just fine. (Windows media player, played canyon.min or passport.mid. from a network share, because they weren't installed on the server.) Like every Win PC, the mouse scroll function increases CPU usage (probably because it has higher priority than other processes, but appears to relate to the current screen/program in use as a foreground app.)

My other PC uses an 800 PIII on BX chipset board, with Santa Cruz soundcard, Windows 2000, and MS WheelMouse (PS/2 version, not optical). Once again the CPU usage goes up, but can't duplicate the skipping problem while playing either MIDI file and rapidly scrolling websites and browsing. Couldn't get the CPU usage up past 89 when mouse response via the # of reports/second was set to 60 or lower. Still no problems playing midi files. (My ICS share is via a 56K modem.) I used both WinMedia Player 6.4, 7.01, and WinAmp 2.79. Media Player 6.4 reports statistics, but version 7.01 will not, but I still didn't hear any skipping.

For sound quality, if this is what your customer needs/wants, nix any idea of using any SB card and use the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz if you can convince the customer. This sound card has much better fidelity and sound reproduction for those interested in sound quality and costs less than the SB Live, plus it has an extra aux connector for a second CD/DVD audio input in addition to the S/PDIF, modem inputs and wavetable connector, versajack (digital out), etc.

Has the order of any sound codecs or any media control devices in XP changed? (In the control panel, sound icon, audio codecs/media control devices). When I use the MS Media player, it doesn't appear to use any codecs or media control devices, but it must at least use a media control device.)

Am I hired?

 

[EY2K]

turn off "Smooth Scrolling" under the IE options, it's definately a graphics prob, I had a similar issue with my laptop (pentium3m-850, 512mb ram) under winxp. that fixed it for me.