garbled sound on a dell laptop?

Question

I have a dell d400 laptop, works fine in all aspects except when I play a DVD or try to listen to music, its sounds like a record skipping. It also does this when I listen to internet music, not using the DVD drive. Is this a sound card problem or wrong drivers maybe...? clueless

Answer 1

Try reinstalling or updating the sound driver. Dell.com has a nice support and download section. try that. If it doesn't help, check your amount of free ram by pressing Ctrl+Alt+del >performance (tab) and check the available physical memory. if shouldn't be below 30 MB.
try reinstalling Media player and Codecs. corrupt codecs can do that sometimes.And finally if nothing helps, then Add a PCMCIA Creative audigy 2 ZS. its not that expensive but is a boost from laptop sound system (avance AC97).

Answer 2

dude, you got ripped off!

are you using windows media player? if so try using something else. that might solve your problem immediatly.

if that doesnt solve your problem then I really dont know. But how much RAM do you have? Less than 256 MB? And what type of internet connection do you have? Those two things could create a bottleneck which would gargle up the sound.

Possible fixes?... hmm. well you could up your virtual memory.>start >control panel >system >advanced tab >performance settings >advanced tab > and change it by about 500MB at a time.

Also if youve got a lot of programs running this could be eating up your RAM. >start >ran >type "MSCONFIG.EXE" >startup tab .....and then uncheck all the junk on your computer that you dont need to be running at start up.

its not your hardware. its not your drivers. but you could need to update your codecs. in media player. >Help >Check for Player Updates.

it doesnt sound like any big thing thats wrong with your computer. probably just too munch junk on it or its set up wrong.
youll find a way around it.

Answer 3

Have you tried connecting to external speakers or headphones to see if the sound is bad also?

*IF* it is, it could be either a bad sound card or perhaps corrupted drivers.

I would try UNinstalling sound drivers, rebootinh and let Windows reinstall drivers to see if that helps.


*IF* the sound is good on external speakers and headphones, then you've got blown speakers in your laptop.

Answer 4

This might be because the system has not activated DMA for ur DVD drive... DMA is Direct Memory Access... This type of addressing has great speed than the others (PIO -Programmed Input/Output)... Check wheter DMA is activated for this drive...If u have nero... then you can check it from nero itself... else Right-click on mycomputer icon on the desktop and select properties... Go to Hardware tab and select "device manager" then selecte "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" (this name may change...look for the one that starts with IDE ) then in primary and secondary channel...(or all the sub-items in it) right click and select properties...there goto advanced settings and then see whether DMA is activated...else activate it... reboot may be required if it is not DMA already... I hope this solves ur problem...

Answer 5

Check and see if your still under warranty, if you are call tech support.
Here's what the support site suggested:
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/tree?c=us&journalid=5101C24E046111DBAECFF7D7359D441C&l=en&s=gen&treeid=FF957D0EEB534DD9A22A428731DF6164
Could try creating a new user account and seeing if the problem still occurs. Make sure the computer is clean of malware (scan for viruses and spyware).

Answer 6

Goto Dell Support, and ask your question there. They will be able to help you better, and tell you if it is your speakers or something to due with the software.

Answer 7

could be also might having something running in background.. something is bringing down u'r reasourecs that's why is sounds like skipping