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    STacSV.exe (Audio Driver) with permanent IO => HDD working too much...

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by dbleyou, Jul 25, 2008.

  1. dbleyou

    dbleyou Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi,
    I received my m1530 yesterday and the first thing i did was a format and a clean re installation with both Vista Business and Windows XP Pro. All is working fine. The laptop is really hotter with Vista than XP but nothing surprising.

    But there is still something that i find really strange, and i wasn't able to find any information about it:
    The process STacSV.exe corresponding to the Sigmatel Audio drivers is running all the time in the task manager (nothing abnormal until now). BUT as i was hearing my HDD working permanently even when the system is doing "nothing" i decided to have a look on the I/O with Process Monitor, a tool from Microsoft to check the accesses to the HDD.
    Usual process were working on the HDD (lsass, explorer...) but i can't understand WHY the audio driver (stacsv.exe) is doing the most part of those IO while working on registry keys... I had a look on the sigmatel/sounds settings but wasn't able to find something...

    Anybody has a solution to replace the sigma drivers or a way to remove those annoying IO please? or at least explain me WHY... (i dislike don't understand stuff like that :p)

    Thanks
     
    dbleyou, Jul 25, 2008
    #1
  2. dbleyou

    dbleyou Notebook Enthusiast

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    up, nobody know this process? or nobody is surprised that a sound driver process is accessing the hard drive every 3 seconds????
     
    dbleyou, Jul 28, 2008
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  3. arnb

    arnb Newbie

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    Same issue here on Dell E1505, Vista Sp1

    Stopped this service, set it to manual start, then rebooted. Still have sound and it did not start. Still have no idea what it's doing.
     
    arnb, Aug 8, 2008
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  4. Schmutzli

    Schmutzli Newbie

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    This thread is probably dead, but...

    STacSV.exe monitors the audio jacks to detect if you plug or unplug headphones. It is also in the M1535 and 1735 Studio notebooks. It interfaces with the IDT Audio program, which is installed by default.

    You can configure the audio software to automatically switch you from stereo speakers, to 5.1 headphones (3 jacks), to 3.1 headphones and a line-in mic, for instance. Handy, but not necessary if you don't switch your jacks often.
     
    Schmutzli, Jan 6, 2009
    #4