Sounds are erratic, hanging

[Bishoff]

I can't figure this one out... My Son's PC (my old) has been making garbled
sound and hanging video/sounds etc... especially when it is starting up and
shutting down (Windows lovely piano startup/shutdown music) and when playing
some videos, the picture will skip with the sound. I have put in a new
sound card, changed pci slots, new drivers, changed speakers.
It also seems to hang on loading windows, what I mean is the mouse will
hang, briefly like every second and a half. After completely
loading,(startup) sounds are better but not 100% though.

After completely loading,(startup) and going to the Control Panel>Sounds and
Audio Devices>Sounds tab, and trying the default windows sounds, they sound
good, it's just startup-shutdown and playing videos and some games.

 

[Curt Christianson]

Hi Bishoff,

First off, videos and games are much more CPU cycle intensive than a "ding"
or "tada" from the standard Windows sounds.
After all you have replaced, I'm wondering if some kind of malware is
lurking inside the computer,severely eating into the CPU's capabilities. If
some are present, they can really wreak havoc with a machines performance.
Have you scanned for spyware/malware?
If not, here are two excellent applications that come highly recommended
(and they're free):

Spybot Search & Destroy
http://www.safer-networking.net/en/download/index.html
and
Lavasofts AdAware http://www.lavasoft.de/support/download/

These would be good starting places. Please post back if you're still
having problems. I'm confident that there are others far more knowledgeable
than me who will help.

--
Curt BD-MVBT

http://dundats.mvps.org/
http://dundats.proboards27.com/index.cgi
http://www.aumha.org/

 

[Curt Christianson]

P.S. to Bishoff,

If the videos you are trying to watch, or the games you are trying to play
are online, sometimes anything slower than a DSL hookup will yield
significantly less than desirable results.

The clue about the mouse being unresponsive is another classic symptom of
something else temporarily "hogging" the CPU--and it doesn't *have* to be
malware in an older/slower/underpowered machine.

--
Curt BD-MVBT

http://dundats.mvps.org/
http://dundats.proboards27.com/index.cgi
http://www.aumha.org/

 

[Bishoff]

...."The clue about the mouse being unresponsive is another classic symptom
of
something else temporarily "hogging" the CPU--and it doesn't *have* to be
malware in an older/slower/underpowered machine."...

I tend to agree about something robbing the CPU but what? It happens mostly
on startup-log-off. It is an older PC but not that old. It has 1.3Ghz Athlon
756 meg ram, and an Nvidea geforce 4000 video card. I have used all the
spy/malware, I've tried everything I can think of. Is there a program that
will log startup programs/etc on startup to view later? if it a windows item
allready on my pc what is it? thanks...

 

[Larry Gardner]

This maybe what your are looking for:

..."The clue about the mouse being unresponsive is another classic symptom
of
something else temporarily "hogging" the CPU--and it doesn't *have* to be
malware in an older/slower/underpowered machine."...

I tend to agree about something robbing the CPU but what? It happens
mostly on startup-log-off. It is an older PC but not that old. It has
1.3Ghz Athlon 756 meg ram, and an Nvidea geforce 4000 video card. I have
used all the spy/malware, I've tried everything I can think of. Is there a
program that will log startup programs/etc on startup to view later? if it
a windows item allready on my pc what is it? thanks...

 

[Larry Gardner]

Forgot to paste:

I have a Dell computer and the first thing I did was:

1. Renamed the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run to
Run-Archive.
2. Created a new
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run key.
3. Placed needed Values from Run-Archive back in Run (e.g., Video apps,
basically was the only one I could think of)
3. Rebooted

Then I gauged how fast it came up compared to when they were all installed.
If it zipped ... which mine did ... I then put each one back one-at-a-time,
and regauged.

There is also a Registry you can set that will log what is going on at login
time for a user:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system

verbosestatus DWORD 1

will show status messages as system comes up and you can see what is causing
a delay.

Read this article for more info:

http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/1136/
http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/1021/
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/221833/

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

If you set the UsrEnvDebugLevel, set it to 0x30002, per the Microsoft
Article

The log file is written to the %SystemRoot%\Debug\UserMode\Userenv.log

 

[Curt Christianson]

Wow,
Excellent idea Richard--lets hope this does the trick.

--
Curt BD-MVBT

http://dundats.mvps.org/
http://dundats.proboards27.com/index.cgi
http://www.aumha.org/

 

[Curt Christianson]

Sorry about that Larry--I had just read a post by R. Urban. Really, really
embarassed, and deserve to go to my room w/o my Oreos. <g>

--
Curt BD-MVBT

http://dundats.mvps.org/
http://dundats.proboards27.com/index.cgi
http://www.aumha.org/

 

[Larry Gardner]

At this time in the AM, I can hardly see my keyboard. No Probs.