strange sound? related problem (or smth else)

[L05_PL]

so, after looking through many webpages and didnt find any constructive answer i decided to post it here maybe some computer genius will get some idea what can cause my problems
it happen in many ways but what i obserwed i think its either sound or hard drive related so:
1st playing wow with sound OFF (no effect, no music), time to time got some 1-2s game freezes, sometimes in the same second as boss pull sometimes during fight (beside DBM and skada prat and bartender i dont have other addons) also im logging the raids so i dont think it could be the disk stoping (the energy saver thingy - tho turned off in win but i have WD green hard drives)
2nd playing world of tanks... everything runs smoothly until the time game wants to load new music then i got 2-3 second freeze
3rd playing team fortress 2, also getting those freezes, but i tried getting alone on the server, and for example, shooting gun constantly each lets say 4-5seconds will get a freeze time to time like the computer is loading something...

my specs:
amd phenom x3 740 (oc @4ghz but it happen without the oc also)
GA-M720-US3 mobo
4gb ram
raid0 on 2xWD5000AADS (32mb cache)
sound blaster live 24bit - which i use for speakers for game sounds, music etc
also using mobo sound card only for ventrillo

any ideas, feedback, need more info or smth? pls

[vesseblah]

Have you tried pulling the soundcard out and using just motherboard audio?

Anyway, looks like latest drivers are two years old which looks like the product is no longer really supported, and it might very well be sound driver issue.

[L05_PL]

yea, they dont support it, forgot to write i have win7 64bit, and yea the newest driver is 2009-10-16...
hmm didnt tried that one... will check in a second

---------- Post added 2011-03-20 at 04:41 PM ----------

hmmm.. looks like it maybe helped, need some more time to test that really good, btw if it'll really by that SB causing the "lags" can i still keep it as comunication device?

[L05_PL]

ok after some long testing, removing all the old drivers, cleaning up the registry, the problem is still here... any ideas?

[ispano]

I doubt I missed it, but you never said what the sound, sounds like. I had a motherboard several years ago that would "buzz" anytime the pcie bus was used heavily, ie when gaming. Also the SB Live series was notorious for having quirky sound issues on many boards.

[Deleted]

ok after some long testing, removing all the old drivers, cleaning up the registry, the problem is still here... any ideas?

Did you only use the MB sound chip while testing? (I.E. removed the card entirely?)

[L05_PL]

yes, the card is removed completly and working only on MB one...
and the sound is either total stoppage (like it would want to load smth but it couldnt or smth), or like looping 0,2s of that sound like 3-5times and then it go further. in both times the looping or the stop also cause screen to freeze for that time...

[vesseblah]

Could be something wrong with motherboard drivers... Did you install all of those when the computer was new?

Don't think there's any other steps to try except clean install of Windows to see if that wipes out any potential software issues, and it's very unlikely it's a hardware problem.

[L05_PL]

hmm, well win7 dont let install any other drivers then the microsoft ones so...
and as i remember it was happening always, since i installed it like 1-2months ago

[vesseblah]

hmm, well win7 dont let install any other drivers then the microsoft ones so...

If you built it yourself, there should be CD in the motherboard's box with the default drivers for chipset, LAN, integrated sound etc. It's actually fairly important to install all of those first and let windows update what it can, instead of getting everything from internet and hoping nothing was forgotten. Motherboard is an exception to the "fetch new drivers from internet first, the CD that ships with the product is months/years old" rule.

[L05_PL]

guess didnt wrote it right, windows doesnt want to install any other drivers to the MB beside microsoft ones, if i try install from the MB cd or from nvidia webpage it says that i dont have any device for this driver

---------- Post added 2011-03-29 at 08:04 PM ----------

yea, whatever i dont try to instal (the drivers from nvidia site, from gigabyte site or the ones from the MB cd - which are all the same), the only thing that is installing is some "nvidia away mode driver" so i really dont know... or maybe its that...
anyway on many forums i found info that Win7 is auto installing its own chipset drivers and nothing else is required for that...

---------- Post added 2011-03-29 at 10:07 PM ----------

btw, on some additional info, sometimes (not always) when it freezes (along with sound) i can hear a sound from disk, smth like head movement or whatever... like the disk have stopped and need to start again, but tbh it shouldnt happen on raid(also have that option to turn off disks set off in windows)

---------- Post added 2011-03-30 at 12:09 PM ----------

ok, i tested also the other way, turning off MB one and using only sb live, the hangups are still here... hard to say if smaller or same but still here... somehow im starting to think that its not soundcard problem...