Sound and CD/DVD problems with Studio 15

I just got a Studio 15 and immediately noticed popping and crackling noises whenever I played audio. I found the fix on these boards which was suggested for the M1330 (disable 802.11a on the wireless N card) and it has done the trick. However, I agree with others who've said that the speakers are v. poor quality even when they're working properly.

But my problems didn't end there. When playing DVDs and CDs (the CD/DVD drive is the 8x DVD+/-RW Optiarc AD7640s) they play OK for a while and then, after anywhere between 5 minutes and half an hour, the drive suddenly stops. When playing DVDs I can resume them after a few seconds but if the computer is importing a CD then I can't eject and have to restart the laptop to continue importing. I've tried updating the drivers but it claims that they're up-to-date. I've also been through all the checks on the Dell Support website and it passed all the self check diagnostics tests if you go through the boot menu.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

My best suggestion is to download the latest BIOS (released yesterday). Apparently it has a fix for "CD-Eject abnormally in Vista64 with 4G RAM". It's a far shot but you never know.

Direct Link

 

Did you call Dell?

There have been a few sound complaints similar to yours and no one really knows. It is rare, but it is happening. I haven't heard anything about the DVD drive except the laptop reacts oddly to even SLIGHTLY scratched DVDs.

Call Dell!!

 

Mine pops all the time, but I always assumed it was Vista since I've seen this occur on desktop systems, as well. I'm living with it for now, but would like to see a fix for this eventually.

 

Thanks for the replies. Like I said before, I was having problems with popping sounds but disabling 802.11a has solved that problem. Out of interest, does your laptop come with the wireless-N card wherespiritsroam? I saw someone else say there some sort of interference problem with them (due to bad shielding?).

I installed the latest BIOS and so far I haven't had any more trouble with the cd/dvd drive. Looks like it might've worked! Thanks

 

Hi Paul - I have a wireless-G card, but do you think I should disable 802.11a anyway? It seems to solve the problem for a lot of folks. Shouldn't this problem be addressed in a future driver update?

 

Can anyone confirm if the 802.11a fix also works for the Wireless-G cards? Nearly all of the threads on here talk about Wireless-N, but perhaps the audio issues are common to all Dell wireless cards?