Windows audio problem

[edwardp at operamail.com]

(Per suggestion of Jerry F., what follows is a description of an audio problem I'm having under Windows XP Home.  Strangely enough, this same problem does not occur under Linux, so I do not believe it is a hardware issue.)

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I recently upgraded from 98SE to XP Home, and 
unfortunately, still have an audio problem.  I do not 
believe this is hardware related, as Linux also runs on 
the same hardware, and I am not having any audio problems 
whatsoever under Linux.

Whenever a music CD is played under XP Home, and this is 
regardless of which program is used (Windows Media Player 
9, RealPlayer, or Nero Media Player), audio will sound 
crackled/has static when menus fade in, if a web browser 
is open and web pages are scrolled (This goes double when 
there is a Flash-based advertisement on the same page, 
the static gets worse in this instance.)

The CPU is an AMD K6-2 with 3D Now at 500 MHz, memory is 
512 Mb, and the sound card is a Creative SoundBlaster 5.1 
Live.  Both the original drivers that installed with XP 
Home, and updated drivers from Creative's web site did 
not remedy the problem.  

Please note that under Windows 98SE on this same 
hardware, the same problem occurred, except only under 
Windows Media Player 9.  RealPlayer and Nero did not 
cause the same under 98SE.

I have checked various settings in both Windows Media and 
RealPlayer.  A setting changed in RealPlayer caused the 
static to stop, however this resulted in the quality of 
the audio to diminish considerably.  Nothing changed in 
the Windows Media settings caused the static to stop.

Since the fading-in of menus also cause brief static with 
the audio, I disabled this in an attempt to remedy the 
problem, however it did not resolve the problem.

As I do not believe this is hardware-related, are there 
any settings in XP Home that are not necessary and can be 
temporarily disabled to see if that remedies the 
problem?  At this point, I am guessing that perhaps XP 
Home as installed, is too much of a strain on this 
system, which is causing this problem?



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