crackling audio Presario C501NR/XP

A few months ago my audio started crackling and stopping altogether for milliseconds at a time. I have installed XP home on this machine twice and the audio was never quite up to snuff (sounds underwater, but rebooting cures it) but I've never had this kind of problem before. Its quite annoying. Tried reinstalling the Conexant driver but i still have the problem. Any ideas?

 

It's called DPC latency and i've seen it so many times that it's not funny anymore. Download "DPC Latency Checker" and you'll see the pretty red bars. That means one or more of your drivers take too much time to do their job, thus screw up your audio.
Think of it like a vehicle assembly line - if one of the workers takes more time to complete his part of the car, all the other ones have to wait for him and the vehicle isn't delivered on time. This is how Windows drivers work at the lowest level - Windows is not a true realtime operating system, and that's why such things can happen.

Update your network drivers, both wired and wireless. It's usually the wireless card causing it, so try turning it off and see what happens. If turning the wireless off fixes the audio and drivers don't help, you will need to replace your wireless card.

 

Red bars all over the place....argg.

I cant do anything to eliminate the red bars completely. Turning off my wireless card reduces them but does not improve audio. I still get red bars to 4000us with both wireless and wired cards off. I've replaced all drivers except the ethernet which I'm off to look for now...

 

Do they follow a specific pattern? Or are they simply all over the place? Post a screenshot please, sometimes certain drivers have certain patterns.

I have also found that using the generic audio driver from Microsoft causes a lot of grief, make sure you're using the manufacturer audio. There is a way to determine what driver is the culprit, i have a video explaining some of it, if you need any clarification let me know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA1pN1IWs8g

 

I think the whole computer is about to go belly up. Here are some screenshots, unfortunately I'm on a dialup and cant watch the video right now. Maybe in a few days when I can get to wireless.

These shots are all different, but nothing different is bing done on the computer. I have Thunderbird and Firefox open, and nothing is being done by either one....

Pretty, isnt it?

 

I should mention other issues I am having. I have defragged, checked for errors, viruses and other nasties. I've cleaned tons of crap off my desktop. There are no errors showing in hardware manager.

Hibernation takes at least 5 minutes in recent months, while previously it was only 30 seconds or less. Write caching is enabled though.

My dialup modem works sporadically. It never ever works in the first 60 seconds or so that I am connected. I have to surf to a page, get the error message (Firefox) that it could not find the page, then sometimes I have to do that one more time before I get it to work. Then I will have recurring periods where it doesnt work, and I lose the connection completely not infrequently.

When I start pretty much any program, the red bars on the DPC go off the charts. If I open an image viewer they max out. If I open Word they max out. If I open Realplayer they max out. As you can see from the screen shots though, they sometimes do that without any provocation.

My pointer gets slowed down to the point of barely moving sometimes.

It just seems like there is a whole lot going on and none is getting better. Do you think this can still be solved by chasing drivers? I'm wondering if its time for a reinstall of XP, something I dont relish but will if I have to..