Games hang due to sound

[Chop]

My machine hangs when I play games. I get the feeling that it is the sound card. The sound always seems to go into a short loop and then the screen freezes. I'm usually able to recover back to Windows XP afterwards. I'm fairly certain that it isn't my Graphics card, I recently replaced it and I had the same problem with the old one.

Sometimes I can play the game for 15 minutes with no problem and other times only 5. I have the same problem with Jedi Knight II and Medal of Honour.

I have moved the sound card to another PCI slot, I have also re-installed everything on my machine. I now only have minimal software programs running so that I can narrow down the problem.

 

[Chop]

Can anyone help with this

 

[JAXSCAD]

Make sure you have the latest (and proper) drivers installed. Note that the drivers are model specific.

Drivers

 

[Chop]

I have installed all the latest drivers for all my hardware. I also have the latest Via 4-in-1 drivers

 

[DaiShan]

which pci slot is the sound card in? try putting it in the 5th pci slot if possible.

 

[Chop]

I have tried putting it in other slopt but it makes no difference

 

[FPSguy]

First, follow DaiShan's advice: Don't just try another PCI slot, try the fifth slot. I have seen some reports that that makes a difference.

If that doesn't work, you might try Microsoft's Sound Troubleshooter and/or this Knowledgebase article. I think the Knowledgebase article is for Windows 98, but I think many of the solutions are viable for other operating systems as well. If neither of those works, you might try buying a $10 PCI sound card, uninstalling your card, and installing the new card to see if it makes a difference. That was the only thing that fixed a similar problem for me.

 

[Electro]

Windows XP is new and it came out too soon so not many manufactures really understand Windows XP. Windows XP is a seperate class of OS from Microsoft. I suggest using either Windows 98, Windows ME, or Windows NT. Wait a year or two for Windows XP to mature.

Do you have a network card, internal cable modem, 56kbit modem, etc?

 

[Mem]

Chop

We have the same board, CPU ,OS etc anyway my SB Audigy is in PCI slot 2,(I know you`ve SB Live) it should work fine since my friend has the same board as us with a SB Live /WinXP ,you should also go into BIOS make sure onboard sound is disabled,also disable both midi and game port address as well.
PCI slot 2 is not shared on the Epox 8KHA+ board I believe.

Some Bios tweaks for gaming might also help,disable all video shadowing,disable system bios cacheable,AGP aperture size set to 64 or 128mb.

Hope this helps.

 

[Chop]

Electro
I do have a network card that is connected to a cable modem.

Mem
I'll try some of those Bios tweaks and see if that helps

At the moment I've got my sound card in PCI slot 5, I've tried some of the other slots as well but there is no difference. I have moved the hardware acceleration to standard, that seems to have helped a bit, but not much. I think I'll try a cheap sound card and see if that makes a difference.

Thanks for the help guys!