IDT High Definition Audio CODEC Conflicting with Skype and Steam?

Hey all-

Was recommended by a friend to post here... Rather new to this =P. So, if you need information or more specs for my computer or whatever, just stay so.

My issue... I posted on the Microsoft Answers forum. If it's ok (and if it's not, please say so, but I don't think I read anywhere that it's not allowed), i'm just going to post a link my post there:

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7network/thread/8c5df232-a404-4606-add1-7e42e89d04f2?prof=required&ppud=4

Hopefully that works lol. I'll summarize in case it doesn't... or in case you don't want to read the whole thing. It's basically the typical, not-so-helpful, Microsoft Employee response... Nothing more needs to be said =P.

Basically... I upgraded to Windows 7 (64 bit, upgraded from Vista) on Tuesday. Started actually using my computer on Wednesday, and immediately noticed a lot of issues. Biggest one was that Skype would freeze after using it for about 30 sec - 1 min. I would shut it down, restart the program, and it wouldn't start up (usually; if it would start up, it would freeze almost immediately after). I eventually just ignored the issue, and continued using my computer. One time after this problem with Skype occurred, I tried to open Steam to try to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and steam wouldn't open. The process would start in Task Manager, but the application wouldn't actually open up. If I hit Alt + Tab, Steam would show up as an option to switch to, but when I tried to switch, it wouldn't actually switch to it. Restarted my computer. Found an update for Skype, after updating that issue has gone away, but Skype still crashes as described above. Now after it freezes, Steam will open, but if I try to play any full-screen game (not only games related to Steam now), the game will freeze during loading or upon going full-screen. So, I decided to stop Skype from loading at start up, and restarted my computer. I was able to get Steam + full-screen games working then, but any online games I played, there would be a sudden lag spike about 30 seconds after me joining (everyone on the server felt it =P), but when their ping went down, mine only went up. I ended up with 350-400 ping and thus unbearable lag. Tried multiple servers, and multiple games, this happened consistently. The friend who recommended me to this forum suggested that I see if I have any drivers from Creative installed, because he had a similar issue and it ended up being his Creative X-Fi Audio Drivers. Ironically, I did in fact order X-Fi with my laptop, but it annoyed me, because it would pop up every time I plugged in headphones (or something along those lines), but for whatever reason, I uninstalled it soon after buying my laptop (I think... or else, I just can't find it in Device Manager lol). What I did come across in Device Manager was the IDT High Definition Audio CODEC. Did some research, saw it had a lot of known conflicts with Windows 7, and decided to try disabling it. Did so, restarted my computer, and what do you know, Skype works perfectly. Not only does Skype work perfectly, but that crazy lag-spike thing I had going on is entirely gone (again, tried multiple servers and multiple games, all work). And, Steam and Skype will run at the same time, as will full-screen games. This has lasted all day now. So, I'm assuming IDT HD had something to do with the problem... except, in disabling it, I have a new problem: no sound. Lol.

So, all this to say, is there an alternative program/driver to IDT HD Audio CODEC that I can use that will get me the same sound quality?

System Specs:
Dell XPS Studio 17
Intel Core2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz
Windows 7 64-bit
6 GB Ram
Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670
Wireless Card: Intel WiFi Link 5300 AGN
Local Area Connection: Broadcom NetLink Gigabit Ethernet

Any more system specs you need, just ask =P. Thanks for reading my long post >.>

 

Nvm, my apologies for posting this =P. Some guy in my dorm who works for my school's tech department manually installed a different driver, and everything seems to be working now.

 

Yes upgrading usually pops out issues like this. Updating the audio driver is usually the first step

 

Ok, still having the issue with steam. My friend rolled back the driver I believe, but all steam-related games (specifically Counter Strike: Source and Battefield: Bad Company 2) are getting ridiculous amounts of ping and choke. I know this has been an ongoing issue, and i've tried all of the following fixes:

-The regedit fix (you can find it here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1043281)
-Disabling UAC.
-And i've tried simple things, such as turning off all other network-using applications, in addition to all the fixes I attempted for the problem listed above...

I can't seem to find any more fixes. I know it has something to do with Windows 7 and with IDT HD Audio CODEC (because I had no problems prior to updating to Windows 7...)

Anyone have any suggestions?

~LolBSOD

 

Doesn't have to do with the audio this time after all... Tried disabling all the audio-related things that I could find, still got the same lag. Feel like i'm back to square one lol. Anyone have any ideas?

EDIT:

While sound was disabled, I looked into task manager and resource monitor... In resource monitor, everything was maxed out except for memory (meaning, CPU, Network, and Disk were all maxed out). However, as soon as I shut the game off, CPU returned to normal, Network and Disk simply dropped a bit. I decided to look in to why Disk and Network remained above 50%... I came up with the following...

Disk has 2 programs constantly switching back and forth writing 400000+ b/sec. Google Chrome is the first one... And System is the second. Honestly, i'm not sure if that's normal. But the fact that the chart on the right is covered in green seems bad to someone who doesn't know what they're doing lol. Additionally, svchost.exe randomly spikes above 2 million b/sec every couple of minutes, which I can't imagine is normal lol.

Network has svchost.exe total of 2500 b/sec and system 1500 b/sec as processes... However, there are about 25 instances of svchost under Network Activity. I can't imagine that's normal, though I don't know very much about this so it very well could be >.>... Additionally, ashWebSv.exe has about 4 instances under TCP connections, which will occasionally go grey, disappear, and then a new one will appear... One particular instance of ashWebSv.exe has 190 latency, another has 10, and the rest have 0. Those remain constant, they haven't changed at all over the past 15 minutes. hnm_svc.exe however fluctuates between 70-120 latency. System occasionally spikes to 200+ latency.

Just had something really different happen... system spiked in TCP connections to 190 latency, and was followed by about 20 other instances of system ranging from 10 to 130 latency (most were in the 100's). At the same time, Network Activity spiked in a similar way, each of them having a total b/sec of about 1000-2000.

I assume quite a bit of this is normal activity, and I just simply can't determine what is and isn't. But something can't be right =P. There's no way that my disk should be overloaded like that, and that network is supposed to consistently be at 50% usage by my system... is there?

 

just opened the lid on my computer, I have 50+ instances of ashwebsv.exe in the TCP connections, and had about 20 in the "network activity". More and more i'm thinking that Avast! is the problem; it has a total latency (adding up all 50 instances in TCP connections) of over 500. I'm going to try installing a different anti-virus, something tells me Avast doesn't like windows 7. Will edit this post when I do so... (Help would still be appreciated all the same =D cause for all I know, this isn't the problem <.<)

Didn't fix it. The problem appears to be that hl2.exe (obviously from steam). I found a thread online, someone having the same problem, who fixed the issue by running Steam.exe and hl2.exe in compatibility mode for vista sp2. I've done that, and it appears to be fixed... Will post back if necessary.

 

For you info Avast works just fine on Win 7 be it version 4 or 5...

 

Hey there LolBSOD. Just wanted to thank you for the info about the IDT driver conflicting with Skype. I was having lots of problems - mainly Skype was sitting and spinning when trying to log in, telling me I was already logged in, had 12 instances running in the background in Task Manager - in short it was not a happy camper. I uninstalled the IDT high-definition audio driver in Control Panel -> Add/Remove programs and restarted the comptuer - VIOLA! It works fine again, and the computer reinstalled the high definition audio, and it works fine - just no IDT driver.
Thanks again for the info. Your post solved my problem!
-S
Dell Inspiron Studion XPS
Windows 7 Enterprise