Sound card for P-7805u?

I'm 99% certain I have found what is causing my laptop to freeze when playing games. It kept going into a sound loop when it froze, and since I'd tried everything else, I figured I might as well disable the audio and see if that fixed it. So far, I haven't had a single crash, I also don't have any audio. I intend to keep testing this fix for another week or so, but I'm looking at getting a new sound card. So my question is what options do I have? Can I use the express slot, external USB, are there any other options besides those two? Any recommendations for decent (cheap) cards?

Thanks

 

I bought this one - 'Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro USB Sound Card' and am happy with it. It is $69.00 US now. Amazon has them for less. I think I paid less several years ago. I am not pushing this or recommending it. Just that I like it. Works on my P-7805u. They even have a usb thumb size card now for less but I haven't tried that one yet.

 

But here's another idea. Maybe the installation of one of your games messed up your sound driver. Have you tried to reinstall the sound driver?

 

Ditto...............

 

No, I never thought that a game could change how the driver functions in such a way that it causes the system to freeze, so I haven't tried it again. What I've done is every time I boot into Windows I go into the Device Manager and uninstall the driver for the audio card, Windows reinstalls it on every boot, so I've been uninstalling it each time I turn it on. I'm still testing it without the driver, I'll give it a while before trying it with the driver installed again. But I suppose its possible, the problem first occurred when I had 3 games installed. First game I've never had the problem in, 2nd one froze, but it was a different issue, randomly loaded both cores up to 100%, which completely froze the system.

 

Well, turns out I was wrong, the audio driver is not the problem. Even with the device disabled, I got a freeze after 2.5 weeks of no problems. One thing I've noticed is that about 10 seconds after freezing, the DVD drive will make noises, the same noises it makes on boot. I also can't ever remember two crashes on the same day, maybe I'll try hibernating it instead of shutting it down and see if that prevents it from happening.

Anyone else have suggestions? So far I know that:

There isn't any malware on the computer.

It made several passes on memtest, about 3, is that enough?

Nothing is overheating.

Windows doesn't have any errors, reports of driver crashes or anything.

It happens in most games, except for one where I've never had the problem. It can happen if I'm just staring at the menu. Sometimes I can play for hours, sometimes it will crash immediately when I first try to play a game.

 

The primary issue of the nVidia 9xxxm series of cards is in the memory. The Video memory declocks and lowers the voltage at 2D stages. If they would create a bios to hold the 3D memory speed and settings it would eliminate 99% or better of the lock ups.

It is funny as prior cards would do the same from resource sharing. nVidia cards just hated it and would lock up the agp/pci bus. The exactsame thing would happen with the sound loops when the bus froze. The only way not to have the freeze was to be sure the video cards had its own IRQ and it did not even share its Pseudo IRQ's could have assignments.

The error message that "windows has recovered" from the video card was the windows bios actually freeing the bus by soft booting the video card. If the bus though is too locked up even the windows soft bios can't reset the card.

My 260m GTX suffers from running at 2D speed as well. Not lock ups but memory blocks corrupt where you get square blocks of artifacts untill you grab a window to get the memory speed back up and drag it over the artifacts so the memory block is rewritten. Like it or not using the powermizer is a no-no for me.

 

I've had the problem with nvlddmkm.sys crashing once, but none of the other times its frozen has Windows reported the display driver crashed. I also tried disabling powermizer, but it still froze, so I know it isn't being caused by the card changing clocks and voltage.

I think I'll run the full 7 passes on memtest and see if it is the RAM, though I kinda doubt it. I might as well update the BIOS while I'm at it, I figure I'll try everything possible before replacing the motherboard.

 

It is the vbios. Even with powermizer disabled to keep the GPU and memory cool it will turn the system down to 2D speeds. Disabling powermizer just tells it not to also do the slowdown to conserve energy etc. In the VBios if you can get it not to run 2D you solve the issue.

There was one post where someone had done this with nbitor/rivatuner and it solved the majority of lockups. But it is not just the power profile but the self preservation profile that has to be changed as well. I don't think there is a registry entry we can do to stop the chip preservation code..............

Edit; you may never see the clocks before lockup change. If the video card locks itself up before it gets to report over the bus the clock has changed you will never see it. All you will see is the lockup and think it is for no apparent reason................

 

Has anyone reported having complete freezes while gaming that were solved by editing the clocks in the vBIOS and flashing it? The only problems I can remember hearing are black screens, artifacts, and CTDs, I can't recall hearing someone say they had freezes that were resolved with the edited BIOS. I don't have the normal problems of screen flickering and such. Most people also had the problems while watching Flash videos, but I never have problems on youtube. But I guess it can't hurt to try.

I guess I'll backup the vBIOS, edit it and flash it with the new clocks, see if that fixes it.

 

the clocks and voltages if I remember correctly. Again memory working here and I'm getting a bit older .

 

I had an exactly the same issue. The thread below solved the problem using Rivertuner.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gateway-emachines/419939-gateway-p-7811-fx-crashing-issue-4.html