T61 Audio Stuttering

Hey I have a Lenovo T61 running a T3700 processor at 2.0 ghz, a 140ms quadro with a Intel 82801HBM ICH8M - High Definition Audio Controller. I have audio stuttering when I am playing music from plugging in anything in a usb port. Aside from plugging in some usb related item inside my laptop, stuttering does not occur otherwise. I have disabled windows audio enhancement. Does anybody know the underlying problem here?

 

First make sure the port is clean - notebook ports get real dirty fast no matter what environment you're in.

Second, go to your Device Manager, right click on your audio device, then uninstall the drivers. Restart so it will reinstall them.

Usually when you get skipping or stuttering your drivers are corrupted or resources are low - i.e., your available RAM is at critical levels and your system is using your HD as a Virtual RAM device. If the system is slow and freezing at the same time, that's your likely culprit. Driver issues are usually the problem if it happens during the last part of the song. If not, there are other things to consider.

Make sure your external device is synced with WMP or whatever you're using to play files. If the files are on a flash or external drive, make sure it's defragged well. Windows' native defrag sucks - Diskeeper is the only program that's worth it for drive defrag's, and it does defrags that most utilities won't, like Flash drives, Paging/Index files, etc.

Make sure any A/V programs you might have don't have auto file scanning turned on - if it is, it will scan any file coming into the system from an external device. Since audio is being streamed, you get the skip effect as it's being scanned.

One thing you can do to determine if it's a problem with the external device, USB cable or syncing is to move a file from the external that displays the symptoms to your internal HD and run it from there. If you get the same problem, then you know it's resource, file, component or driver related.

How do I stop my music from skipping or breaking up when I play it?

 

Thanks for your response.

To clarify, because I know was a bit unclear, the stuttering only occurs when I plug in/eject a USB device while i'm running music. I'm on 4 gigs of ram - I did a memory check and it did not detect any errors with the memory.

I also tried what you said - to stream audio from external and then i plugged in a usb flash drive which also lead to audio stuttering when I plugged it in.