Sound and Boot problem.

[Adriaan]

Hello Tech-faq.com.

First of all I'd like to mention that my english is not perfect, so I might use some crappy language now and then


My computer is having some problems at the moment. My computer always booted quite fast, but now, when I boot windows, and I get the screen with Microsoft Windows XP and the loading bar, it takes much longer then it should, but only when I run windows normal. When I do a Safeboot, it takes less time, like it did before.

When I log into my windows account, there's a long waiting time, it's loading all icons and processes. It will take another 30 seconds before I can use my computer.

I play a lot of games. For example, I play World of Warcraft. As you might know, World of warcraft has only one loading screen (when you start the game). When you walk into another area of the game (where normally you would have a loading screen), World of Warcraft streams it out of your memory. When it does, my sound goes mad. It is very shocky and certainly not nice to listen to.
The problems are not only in World of Warcraft, though. Even Age of Empires 2 has this problem, and seen my system specs (see below), that's pretty weird. When I look carefully at this problem, it makes me think it has something to do with my memory, because the problem is only there when I'm loading something. When the loading is done, everything runs flawless.

I understand your first reaction will be something like: Format your harddisk, reinstall Windows. That was my first thought as well, and so I did (twice actually). The problems were gone. I installed the automatic upgrades and service pack 2, and everything ran fine, but at a certain point it all went like before again. It was really frustrating, as you might understand.

I ran the Hitman Pro virus scans and EZ antivirus, but it didn't find anything.

My system specs are:

120 gb harddisk
2.66 ghz processor
1gb RAM
Ati X1600 (512 mb version) graphics card
Windows XP - home edition


If I didn't provide you of enough information about the problem, please tell me.

I really hope you can help me It's been quite some time now.

[Will.Spencer]

Originally Posted by Adriaan

First of all I'd like to mention that my english is not perfect, so I might use some crappy language now and then

I bet my Dutch is worse than your English. All I can remember is "Twei beiren, austublieft" and "dank u wel!" :lol:

After the troubleshooting steps that you have already finished, the next thing that I would try are some good hardware diagnostics. I would start with BurnInTest and focus especially on memory tests.

After that, I would examine my BIOS settings. I might set them all back to safe defaults just to see if the issues improve.

[Adriaan]

Thanks a lot for your response, I'll try these things.

BTW, It's: "twee biertjes, alstublieft". That "dank u wel" was pretty good!

EDIT

I ran the BurnInTest, 2 or more cycles of everything: 0 errors.
Killed CMOS and loaded BIOS defaults with Cmospwd_win.exe: Things didn't change

[Will.Spencer]

That's not so happy. <thinking>

[Adriaan]

I was thinking of buying a new motherboard and dual core processor, together with a new harddisk and combine those with my existing hardware.

Maybe that'll fix things :p

But I'd rather keep this machine working untill I have the money.

[Will.Spencer]

Can you borrow a spare motherboard, video card, RAM, etc...?

That would let you swap out the components one-by-one to see which one is causing you grief.