USB hard drive causing sound problems

[Scully]

I recently bought a USB external hard drive and notice that
whenever I have it turned on it causes a cracking sound
when I play music (or generate sound, eg with text to
speech programs). Kind of like suddenly the music is being
played off an old record. Sure enough, when I turn the
drive off at the mains (or disconnect it), sound returns to
normal with no cracking. Some points to note are:

- This only happens with my cheap Creative Soundblaster PCI
card, when I use my rubbish onboard sound, no cracking
happens (I have no other PCI sound cards to test, but I
would assume that the problem is not specific to my card,
just the fact that it's a PCI card).

- The problem does not occur when I use Linux (thus I'm
guessing it's some problem in Windows XP).

- I have the latest drivers for my motherboard, sound card
and Windows updates.

- I've tried moving my sound card to a different PCI slot,
but that didn't help.

- My external hard drive is fine, nothing wrong with it.

I'm absolutely stumped why this is happening - I have other
USB devices and they don't cause a problem (so I'm guessing
it's only hard drives and similar stuff which is constantly
accessed).

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks
Aaron.

My Computer:
Athlon XP 2400
ASRock Motherboard (KV7 Something off the top of my head)
Creative Soundblaster standard sound card
2 x internal hard drives (Windows XP Home / SuSE 9)
Cd writer, DVD drive
NVIDIA Geforce 2 64MB MX graphics
....etc.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Sounds like the PCI slot and the USB ports are "sharing" the IRQ lines. Try
to install the Sound Blaster in a different slot.

Y.

 

[Guest]

I've tried - doesn't work.

-----Original Message-----
Sounds like the PCI slot and the USB ports are "sharing" the IRQ lines. Try
to install the Sound Blaster in a different slot.

Y.




.

 

[Guest]

Have you checked your settings in your bios? They should
be PNP if you are using a Microsoft Windows-based o/s