Sound Echo, Stuttering?

[VarusTech]

Hello, all.

I've been having a rather strange problem with my computer of late; whenever I try to play a video of any sort, whether it be from Blip, Vimeo, or YouTube, the sound starts degrading quickly. Within the first minute on some videos, sometimes less, the sound begins to stutter; after a minute or two, it sounds like it's echoing and lagging horribly, although the video itself is running normally. I've been in a number of games, some of which require a lot of memory, and my sound is fine in those, and I've confirmed that it's not a speaker problem because the echoing persists when I use my headphones. I suspect (but in no way am sure) that this may be a driver problem, or possibly a problem with my sound card.

I'd appreciate any and all help that can be offered on this problem, as I would like to regain my sound again! Thanks in advance to anyone who can help with this.

 

[PhilFrisbie]

The firs step should be to install the latest sound driver.

 

[Cyberat_88]

Bad game programmers usually say "upgrade to the latest sound driver to patch for my horrible programming skills", but if your driver is corrupt it might help with that. After re-installing drivers always re-run DirectX setup to add the corresponding files.

 

[VarusTech]

I'm thankful for the input, but I'm afraid that I'm rather unsure as to how to reinstall my drivers. (My technical knowhow for this covers turning the computer on/off, checking for the problem in my headphones and speakers, and then running to Google for a solution) How would I go about reinstalling my drivers?

 

[PhilFrisbie]

If you have a prebuilt PC go the the manufacturer's website and download the latest driver for your system. If you have a custom PC go to the motherboard manufacturer's website to get the latest driver.

After you download the driver run it and follow any directions.

 

[VarusTech]

I've found a driver application that tracks down all the drivers for your computer's various devices online and installs them, and while I wasn't able to install the driver, it gave me an error which I looked up online and found was related to a driver for a different operating system (Vista, perhaps, or 7) getting installed on XP, then hit a blue screen, I was able to roll back my sound card's driver from that program, and the sound no longer stutters. I don't know how permanent a fix this is, but I've at least isolated the source of the problem, it would appear. I thank everyone here for offering their help, and I'll be sure to post here if the problem happens again.

 

[PhilFrisbie]

Do not use those driver programs; simply follow my previous post.

 

[Cyberat_88]

Driver Downloaders are a viral plague on the industry, do what PhilFrisbie said. Listen to the professionals, stop thinking you know better, your PC will thank you.

 

[VarusTech]

Well, I only used the program on the advice of a friend, since I didn't know what company to get the driver from before. I've since found the driver I need, but it doesn't install correctly. I download it, run the installer, then I go to restart my computer, and I get the same error about something going on with one of my .dll files in the System32 folder, then my sound continues to act up. I tried uninstalling the faulty driver, which I found was only meant for Windows Vista/7, not XP, which may be why this error is happening, but the driver program failed to uninstall it or rollback to my last driver. So, I suppose my next question would be "how do I get rid of the faulty driver?"

 

[Cyberat_88]

Control Panel, Device Manager, Uninstall from the device or get a Driver Remover software to do it for you, usually one from the company you installed, but not necessarily.