AOL 9.0 SE sign on and "Welcome, You've Got Mail" Stutter

[mhajii210]

Windows XP Pro SP2
Soyo P4I865PE Plus Dragon 2 board
Intel Pentium 4 3.20E GHZ
1.00 GB Ram
AGP 8x ATI 9800 Pro 128MB
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz PCI Audio
Onboard Davicom NIC
AOL 9.0 SE via Verizon DSL
Broadband Blaster DSL Modem via ethernet
D-Link DI-624 Router

I am having an issue with the AOL sounds. Sometimes when I sign on or
sign off, the AOL .wav sound or sounds briefly stutter. For example,
at random the "Welcome, You've got mail" sounds will sometimes briefly
stutter as I sign on to AOL. Other times I can hear a slight pop or
tick sound. Using Windows Task Manager I can see that there is a CPU
spike to 100% during the AOL sign on process. Sometimes this happens
as I sign off as well when it plays the "Goodbye" .wav sound. I
thought it had something to do with the onboard NIC so I tried things
out with a PCI ethernet card and same thing happens. I also tested
things with an Audigy Gamer card and same exact problem. I have tried
everything you can imagine but I can't figure out why this is
happening. I have tried different PCI slots and no difference. I
have no audio problems in any other applications or graphically
intensive games. I can play mp3 and/or wave files with multiple apps
open without any hiccups. The only audio solution that doesn't
exhibit this behavior is the onboard C-Media AC97 sound which sounds
like crap. With the onboard sound there is no stutter as I sign on or
sign off. I have turned off audio hardware acceleration and disabled
unnecessary services and startup apps using msconfig and still no
luck. Is this just an AOL bug or something? It's just annoying as I
sign on daily to check my E-mail and get this stutter. If anyone has
any suggestions please let me know. Thank you!

Morad.

 

[The Bandit]

r u using the new 9.0 security edition? if so go back to the pevious
version. there are flaws in the last release of 9.0 also check you event
viewer so u see under applications userenv warning? another flaw it causes.

 

[mhajii210]

I am using the new security edition, but I was getting the same thing
with the previous AOL 9.0 version. I don't remember this sound
problem happening with version 8.0. Thanks for the reply.

Morad.

 

[mhajii210]

I was playing around with Windows Media Player 10.0 and the funny thing
is that I get no stuttering whatsoever while playing an mp3 and signing
on or signing off AOL 9.0 SE. However, the stupid AOL sounds "Welcome.
You've got mail." and "Goodbye." sometimes stutter when I'm signing on
or signing off. Do you guys think it's the AOL 9.0 resource hog that
has some weird bug? I'm not getting any other sound issues with any
other application or games. What I don't understand is how my crappy
onboard sound has no problems with the AOL sounds and my PCI Santa Cruz
soundcard does. Go figure!

Morad.