Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 Sound Problems

[Mart]

The sound on my Gigabye mobo is really gitchy and skips. Tried updating drivers, even tried a PCI sound card....still the same. My system consists of. AMD 2.8 processsor, 512mb DDR memory, 40 Gig H/D ATA 100, PSU 550 Watts with 32amps on the 12v line.
I have even contacted Gigabyte over this and they can't seem to figure it out.
What puzzles me is that when I start the pc up, then the sound is fine, but then it detorates as time goes on.
I have tried changing the Hard drive from DMA 5 to PIO and then back again, yes this does seem to solve the problem initially, but then next time I reboot its back to square one.
Any help would be greatful.

[NHH]

It sounds like a buffering problem. Usually buffering problems are caused by driver 'latency'.
Try messing about with different 'Hardware Acceleration' levels....
(XP--- Control Panel, Sound & Audio Properties, Speaker Settings-Advanced, Performance)
See what effect this has.

Also, do you have many USB devices plugged in?
Try disconnecting them..

See if disabling the USB onboard controller in the BIOS makes a difference... That's if you're not using USB keyboard & mouse.

More techy... Are the device I/O's in the BIOS manually set? Try Auto

[mart]

Done all you said, had those slider bars in sound properties all over the place, checked bios .. all ok, tried disabling USB.... still same..... re-installed XP pro.... still same.
Even if I just try and play the windows startup/shutdown sound in contol panel, the sound has glitches, but in exactly the same places. I've disconnected the LAN connection as I thought it may be the Broadband connection that was causing the sound to blip, but still same. Tried updating bios to F6 from Gigabytes web site... and guess what..... still same aaaarrrrrhhhh..............This has really got me baffled and I'm at a loss what to try next. What I can't understand is that when I change the Hard drive DMA to PIO and then back again, the sound is good until rebooted. I was wondering if I would be beter off using FAT32 instead of NTFS.... do you thing it could make any difference.

[NHH]

Can't imagine that the file system would make any difference.
It does sound like a blinder of a problem.

I've got a mate who has a similar problem with his and we've tried allsorts... apart from replacing the RAM (which could be the next test).
Tried different RAM clock, PCI clock, disconnecting the DVD/CD drives (which did make a difference), and a different OS.
We even changed out the IDE cables from old tatty ones to new Ultra ATA cables and tried different master/slave configurations as the overhead on hard-disc reading & writing is ridiculous. Didn't seem to make much difference.

The biggest improvement with his problem was getting rid of Norton (bloatware!) Internet Security. Although the problem has never been fully erradicated.

Can't remember what m.board he has. I'll mail him and check.

Later Mart...

[mart]

I have got Norton Internet security and Antivirus, but I re-installed XP and tried it without any programs.
The Memory is by crucial Technology DDR3200 512mb if thats any help.

[NHH]

Well, didn't find out what m.board my mate has (haven't had time to go round and he doesn't know) but this problem is most likely going to be a problem with hardware.

The Norton thing was just a way of lessening an underlying problem.

Try re-installing Windows to flush out any possible driver issues.
Be sure to download & backup all the latest drivers for your stuff before hand.

If that doesn't sort the problem out then the next thing to look at would be your RAM.
Try testing your RAM with a tester program. (here's a free one www.memtest86.com/#download1)
If you've got a good mate that'll let you borrow their RAM for a day then take out yours and give it a try.