Computer Audio giving me static sound...

Hey all. I have a Dell Dimension 5100 that I've owned for a little more than three years, and I'm having issues with audio. I had been getting good sound out of my speakers until this past May, when I had to wipe my hard drive because of technical difficulties. After uploading an OS and getting the PC to work again, my sound was nowhere near as loud and was starting to get a very static-y sound from the bass. I got that sound to go away, but only by reducing the Wave settings on Playback Control, which made it even softer. I had thought that it may have been the speakers, but I hooked my Skullcandy headphones into my computer and had the same problem with those, and I know that they don't have bass problems. Any advice? Do I need to download a driver, could this be an audio card problem? Thanks guys.

 

It is probably a driver problem.
What OS are you using?
(If XP, are you updated to SP3?)
HD audio will not install properly under SP3, but I have a fix if you need it.

Generally you need to install the chipset driver before the audio driver.
Here is the XP drivers page for your Dell:
http://support.dell.com/support/dow...ID=DIMENSION 5100&os=WW1&osl=en&catid=&impid=

If you still have the static after the install, you can uninstall the IDE drivers, reboot and Windows will reinstall them. That is sometimes a cause of audio noises.

 

My OS is Windows XP Home. I'm not sure if I'm updated to SP3, ResNet at my school uploaded my OS and told me they got all the Windows updates. But how do I check if I did get SP3?

I downloaded both the chipset and audio drivers (chipset first), ran them, said "Yes To All" when asking if I should replace files, and then rebooted. Still have static. If I uninstall these drivers, will Windows automatically reinstall them? How do I go about doing that?

Thanks again guys.

 

Go to Start>Control Panel> System. On the Hardware tab, click Device Manager.
You will see the IDE ATA/ATAPI devices near the top of the list.
Click the plus sign in front of them
Now just right click on each of them and choose uninstall. Then restart your PC.
They are Windows drivers, so Windows will reinstall them when it boots back up.