AudioDG is crippling my system. Can this be fixed?

Aah, another problem. I'm going to have to set up camp in this Vista forum if it doesn't stop being mean to me...

Anyway, I've noticed since I got this computer that my RAM usage starts out at 30% (which is reasonable, considering I've heard that Vista takes a little over 1GB of the RAM itself). However, after merely 2 hours of use (just using Trillian and Firefox and perhaps some music in the background), it skyrockets. I've watched the usage climb from 49% to 53% in about 30 minutes, max. After observing Task Manager for a while, as I had suspected the problem to be with Firefox, I discovered that it's actually a problem with AudioDG.exe. Google has informed me that this bloated piece of unspeakable-word-here is mandatory for Vista. So I'm forced to just sit here and watch it eat all of my resources, it seems. Or maybe not.

This is where you guys come in. I'm a novice when it comes to hardware, and when it comes to talk of driver updates my head spins. Is there something - anything - I can do to try to fix this without degrading my audio performance and/or potentially breaking anything? After all, I got the system with the good speakers and the microphone so I could -use- such features, not so I could just stare at them and go "Nope, you use too much RAM... bye..."

While my system rarely goes over 10% CPU usage (and that's what it spikes to; it stays at around 3% usage), the moment I turn on a song, it shoots up to a consistent 27% usage with a spike of up to 40% or more. This bothers me. A lot.

Also, it should be noted that I consistently use my computer from 9 - 20 hours per day. So this RAM leak is a major issue for me, since I don't particularly enjoy having to reboot every few hours just to keep it from slowing to a crawl. At this very moment, after 3 hours and 42 minutes of usage, AudioDG.exe is taking up 568 MB of my RAM. At the time I started writing this post, it was taking up 556 MB of my RAM.

 

are you streaming music?

 

Nope. I'm playing .mp3 files that reside on my hard drive.

 

Alright, so I've done more research on the matter and still haven't found an acceptable solution. There's the whole 'disable enhancements' fix, but I happen to want to use the bass boost and virtual surround when watching movies. At the moment, they're not checked though so I fail to see why disabling everything all together should be considered a proper 'fix' to a problem that should not be occurring in the first place.

My sound drivers happen to be "High Definition Audio Device" and "IDT High Definition Audio CODEC". Upon a google search, I found mention of bad things happening when updating the IDT Codec with Vista SP1 and I am not sure I like the prospect of having my system completely fail to register that I have a sound card. No, thanks, to that. So what exactly am I supposed to do? Not everyone has this issue, so certainly there has to be some way to fix it.

Sorry for the double post, but I would like to find a way around having my RAM devoured by an audio process. >_<

 

The issues that you are having with AudioDG.exe were reported way back in 2007 when vista was still under RC2 built. And it all pointed out to one simple fix, that is to get the latest audio driver from the manufacturer. Since you updated to SP1, i recommend un.installing and re.installing the audio driver of your device, sometimes it help vista to refresh its memory that you indeed have an audio card.

cheers ...

 

I actually purchased this computer with SP1 on it, in fact it was only about two weeks ago that I got it. Not sure that would make a difference.

Could someone please tell me -how- to go about the uninstalling and reinstalling of the audio driver, though? This is the sort of thing I have no clue about - and that I definitely wouldn't want to mess up. (I've never in my life updated drivers on any computer, usually going by the 'if it isn't broken, don't fix it' motto. So now that something's 'broken,' I have no clue how to fix it.)

 

To uninstall a driver, go to device manager, find the device, right-click, Properties, Drivers tab, Uninstall driver.

BUT... try keeping it uninstalled. My sound works at least as well without my mfr's sound driver. Vista's built-in high-def audio driver can probably handle your sound chip too.

But if you need to reinstall it, download the driver from your OEM... HP in your case I guess.

 

Indeed, it's HP. Though it didn't come with any discs. Would the recovery discs created on first startup count as my OEM? Should probably make sure before uninstalling the driver - just in case.

*paranoid about messing something up beyond repair*