Strange sounds/temporary freezes with Asus notebook

Hello all,

I've been recently experiencing strange sounds on my (fairly) new Asus notebook. It is an N61J series, and I purchased it about 6 months ago, with no problems thus far. Specs:

ATI Radeon 5750, 4 GB RAM, Win 7 Home, i7 740QM with Realtek HD sound card.

Just in the last few days, however, I'd been experiencing weird hiccups with the sound. Every so often (~ every half hour) when I'm listening to music or watching a movie, the sound/video will hang for a split second and make that dreaded low-pitched hum that often comes when Windows completey freezes (... if you know what I'm talking about). It's only for a split second, though, and then it's back to normal. It's only been very recently and I've no idea what's causing it. I did a big defrag yesterday, as well as cleaned my registry, but to no avail. Does anyone have any idea what's going on/how to fix it?

Thanks!

 

You don't happen to have a seagate momentus xt hybrid drive in that do you? There is new firmware for those that addresses stuttering issues.

If it's not that, my guess is either some sort of antivirus getting in the way, or maybe try reinstalling or upgrading your audio drivers from ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Support-

There was also an issue on some older models (M50, G50) with audio stuttering related to the synaptics touchpad. If disabling the touchpad in the BIOS helps it, it could be a similar issue. The fix for that was new ATK and touchpad drivers, so again, maybe try the latest drivers.

 

No, my drive isn't a Seagate (my external is, but I've neither music nor movies on there, so I don't think it would be conflicting). I'll try reinstalling my sound drivers if it happens again, but it's actually been working fine the last few days! Fingers crossed... Thanks for your input!