HDD fights with WMP 11

[Guest]

Have XP Pro up and running on a desktop. AMD 3400+ and 1 gig of RAM. Some
months ago, this problem started when I installed/updated Adobe's Acrobat
7.0. Note: this is what I think happened but am not rock solid sure. I've
fought with it since then and have finally decided to try and get some help.

When I'm on the computer listening to music, either from a CD or via an Mp3
or via Internet Radio, as soon as the HDD fires up to do something, the music
is interrupted. This is kind of hard to explain but the music will have a
nasty raspy sound that "matches" the frequency and duration of HDD activity.
If the HDD has a short burst of read/write activity, music will have the same
burst of raspy interruption. If the HDD has a long burst of read/write
activity, music will have the same length of interruption and if the HDD
activity is really intense, music will almost come to a halt. I've
uninstalled Adobe and ran without it (pretty hard to do today) but whatever
swtiches or settings got into the machine is now permed in.

A review of System > Performance Options > Advanced Tab shows the following:
I have Visual Effects adjusted for best performance. Processor Sched
Priority - Background, Memory Usage - Programs, Virtual Mem - Total 1536.
Under "Set" I see Min + 1536 and Max = 3072. These values seem OK to me.
Shifting them around doesn't seem to help much. I think this may have
something to do with the HDD or virtual memory cache because there are a few
times when I'll relaunch a previously used process (like IE) and the HDD
doesn't come on and music is fine. So somewhere the HDD is fighting with the
music for attention. I'm also thinking some IRQ is in conflict. The AC-97
Integrated Sound device is on IRQ 22 and the 160 gB HDD is a SATA drive
therefore no IRQ that I can see.

I'd really like some help to sort this out. Thanks.

 

[Unknown]

Have you recently run disk clean and defrag?

 

[Unknown]

Two other items. Do you have a virus detect program running in the
background?
Have you done a ctrl--alt--del- and checked what is running? (Task Manager).

 

[Guest]

Yes, I run CCleaner a couple of times per week. CCleaner finds about the
same amount of "gunk" each time through. Diskeeper v12 is run once per week
on Sundays when the computer isn't doing much.

Hoib

 

[Guest]

OK -

I run NOD32 in the background. I don't think it's adviseable to be on the
'net without an AV program overseeing what goes on.

Task Mgr - it's not showing anything out of the ordinary taking up huge
portions of processor time. I'm running about 98% of the time with System
Idle Processing. Maybe I should try to latch on to a utility that will allow
me to more closely monitor XP's call for resources. I'll try to post back.

 

[Unknown]

For what it's worth, I don't run ANY virus programs. (Everyone will jump on
me). I think you should try shutting down NOD32 to test.

 

[Harry Ohrn]

Does anything here
http://ask.metafilter.com/23569/Sound-distortion-in-Windows-XP point you in
a direction that you haven't thought of yet?