Sound Pausing/Skipping in XP

[SunBlind]

Hi, I seem to be having a problem with my audio/sound...
Any sound that comes from my comp, be it system, MP3,
etc. jumps and pauses repeatedly. I've tried system
restore, restarting, updating my sound drivers,
redownloading the media, everything... Nothing seems to
be working . I saw a similar post on another message board, and
the response was to open TaskManager and post back with
the process that was running up the CPU usage, and for
me, it's System Idle Process and mpservic.exe (the system
is the user) Does anyone know if there is a patch or fix
that can correct this? I'd really appreciate any help,
thanks.

[fenderaman]

Greetings! I have the exact same problem with my machine. I have not tried anything yet, but it has been killing me for months now. It did not always do this, did yours? I don't know what brought it on either. The sound will skip or sputter no matter if it is a system sound, a music CD, an MP3 or whatever. I bought my machine from Compaq with Windows XP Home already installed. I believe I have a recovery disc, but that is all. You say you have already tried this? I am curious if anyone else is having this same problem.

[fenderaman]

SunBlind,
I have found the problem! Well, I can't say that I came up with the solution on my own, but I did find some great information on this problem that we are having and the solution. The solution is rather easy and I feel like smacking my head against the wall for not figuring this out sooner. So here's what I did.
I did a Google search for "sound skipping windows xp home" and someone on this site mentioned something about DMA. http://forums.devshed.com/archive/26/2003/8/4/43094
The last post on this thread is where someone talked enabling DMA (Direct Memory Access) on the cd rom drive. I didn't think it was just the cd rom drive, but it sounded like the right path to follow. So then I did a google search for "enabling dma windows xp home". The very first listing was http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/...e/IDE-DMA.mspx .
This little gem explains what was happening on my machine exactly. The title of the listing is "DMA Mode for ATA/ATAPI Devices in Windows XP". It goes on the explain DMA mode and PIO mode. It states that after a certain amount of repeated DMA errors, XP will turn off DMA and enable PIO. So you have to manually go in and enable DMA in the device manager. Read the article completely, as I did not and it took a couple of times to get it right. Basically, the easiest way to do this is as the article states:
To enable DMA mode using the Device Manager

1. Open Device Manager.
2. Double-click IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers to display the list of controllers and channels.
3. Right-click the icon for the channel to which the device is connected, select Properties, and then click the Advanced Settings tab.
4. In the Current Transfer Mode drop-down box, select DMA if Available if the current setting is "PIO Only."
If the drop-down box already shows "DMA if Available" but the current transfer mode is PIO, then the user must toggle the settings. That is:
• Change the selection from "DMA if available" to PIO only, and click OK.
• Then repeat the steps above to change the selection to DMA if Available.

This didn't do the trick for me because as stated earlier in the article, "For repeated DMA errors. Windows XP will turn off DMA mode for a device after encountering certain errors during data transfer operations. If more that six DMA transfer timeouts occur, Windows will turn off DMA and use only PIO mode on that device.

In this case, the user cannot turn on DMA for this device. The only option for the user who wants to enable DMA mode is to uninstall and reinstall the device."
It would allow me to change it, but when I closed the device manager and opened it back up, it was still set back on PIO mode.
So basically I had to uninstall the driver (as stated in the above quote) for my Primary IDE Channel and reboot. Once this was complete, the "Found new Hardware" message came up and installed the necessary drivers. Then the system rebooted for this to take effect. When it came back up.........YEAH, the Current Transfer Mode was set to Ultra DMA and all is well! NO MORE SKIPPING SOUND!!!!
So, as you can see, the problem is actually quite easy to fix. Now if I could only find what caused those repeated DMA errors. So far, so good, and if it does it again, I know how to fix it! WHAT A RELIEF!!!!!!!!! Hope this helps everyone because I have noticed a lot of people with this problem on various sites.

[DoctorD]

Hi - been having the same problems too. Tried the above but it didn't work.

Found the issue in the end, after a long time watching performance monitor - it was being caused by my spyware guard - it had a memory guard enabled - this was eating all my processor time sporadically when media player, winamp, musicmatch were palying. Disabled this, but left all other protection enabled and hey presto, problem fixed.

Just an idea, but it's worth checking.

D

[Mani]

Hi guys,

Please help me if you can.

I've tried the above suggestions, but to no avail. DMA is fully activated, and I've tried going through my processes, but can't find anything hogging resources. Is there a trick here?

If there's anything else you can think of, I'm all ears.

Cheers,
*Mani.

[adaywayne]

I tend to agree with DoctorD. Some programs only activate sporadically, so you probably won't see how much of the CPU resources they are using unless you are watching all the time.

I had the same problems but only occasionally. Now, whenever I am using any audio program, I close all other running processes first. There are freeware programs which do this with one click.

[Mani]

Do you know of these programs? Where can I get one?

Thanks!

*Mani.

[adaywayne]

I have been using EndIt All for years but see that it is no longer free. However if you enter that name into Google you will find websites where you can still get it. I haven't searched for others
Sorry.