Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L audio crackling

I just got done installing a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L motherboard along with a Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 video card. Everything is going smooth, except for one thing; I've got this incessant crackling noise in the background.

I can still hear music and whatnot fine, but when I'm browsing forums I can hear this steady crackling. Usually it happens when I'm scrolling with my mouse button, but just moving the mouse around tends to do it as well. I upgraded my comp so I could play Warhammer Online at something higher than 5 FPS, but when I start the game up the crackling gets even louder at the character select screen. It happens no matter what I'm doing, but the fact that it's louder in Warhammer Online (Stuff like music drowns out the noise) is particularly bothersome.

I've downloaded the most recent audio drivers I could find; the audio driver from Gigabyte and the Realtek HD audio drivers linked here on MG. Neither has done anything thus far. I just downloaded, extracted and ran the Setup file. Not sure if maybe I've done something wrong there.

When I go to Sound, Video and Game Controllers, I have the following listed:

ATI Function Driver for High Definition Audio - ATI AA01
Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drivers
Legacy Video Capture Devices
Media Control Devices
Realtek High Definition Audio
Video Codecs

I'd appreciate any possible help. It's a really annoying problem and I've been up for about four hours hunting and installing drivers to try and fix the issue.

I'd also like to clarify that I've tried connecting/disconnecting my headphones and various headphones all crackle and the speakers crackle without headphones attached. My speakers are built into my monitor, but I didn't have this problem before I upgraded my hardware earlier today.

 

I also wanted to clarify that I'm using Windows XP. If it matters, I also installed a 1.8 dual core yesterday (Overclocked to a 2.66 now) along with four 512mb sticks of memory (Got them free from a friend). Not sure if either of those could cause this problem, but thought I'd throw it out there.

Also, I want to clarify that my sound does work perfectly fine; I can hear songs and movies and games and whatnot. However, there's always a crackling noise in the background that just annoys me to death. It also seems to happen when the computer is doing a process; when I ran a Smart Defrag scan on the computer last night it was crackling the entire time.

 

Try lowering your Hardware Acceleration.
Usually, a lot of crackling and popping can be cured by uninstalling your IDE drivers (through Device Manager), then doing a restart, but I'm not sure this is the case here.

Actually, being you mention that it happens because of mouse movement, I'm wondering if it is the mouse at fault.
Have you tried another mouse or reinstalling the mouse drivers, if you installed any?

 

Well, I just tried a different mouse (My old one) and it's still crackling/popping. I didn't install any mouse drivers, though XP might have when I plugged the mouse in, I suppose.

It doesn't happen only because of mouse movement. It happens periodically on its own, but while I'm scrolling with my mouse it happens. It also happens in the background whenever I'm playing a game, such as Warhammer Online or Team Fortress 2. Right now, while I'm typing and not moving anything else, it happens in sporadic bursts.

I'll try uninstalling the drivers through Device Manager and see if that helps.

 

Just uninstalled the drivers through Device Manager, rebooted and the problem persists. I also tried lowering the audio hardware acceleration, but that didn't fix the issue either.

 

There should be an entry in Device manager for Mice and Pointing Devices.
Try the same trick there, uninstall and restart. Windows should reload the driver.

 

Uninstalling the mouse driver and rebooting didn't help. My friend suggested going into BIOS and setting the PCI bus to 100 instead of Auto, but that didn't do anything.

 

Somehow I missed this when you posted your drivers in Device Manager:
ATI Function Driver for High Definition Audio - ATI AA01
Try disabling that.
ATI seems to install it's own HD driver. If you're not using it, it doesn't need to be there.
Also:
Check the Audio tab in Control Panel>Sounds and Audio Devices.
See if your sound device (Realtek) is listed in the Sound Playback Default Device list.
Make sure it is the Default. You can also mark the "Use only default devices box"
Check the Hardware tab.
See if sound device is listed in the list. If it is make sure it is enabled.

If any of this fixes the cracling, uninstall the ATI driver.
If it comes back just disable it again and leave it that way.

 

Hello I'm new and haven't figured out how to start a new thread!

Why does my mouse keep shutting down my browser? It has a mind of its own! Especially when I'm in my email account it goes nuts.. all over the place! And Ive also noticed that some of my strokes are logged because there is a laps in time after typing. This mouse wanting to shut my browser down is a pain when Im in the middle of writing!

THANKS!

 

Haha. I just got back from my friend's house, since he had an external sound card I could try out. We thought the sound card might be bad, but wanted to make sure before I had to go looking for a new one.

We actually ended up disabling that on a whim to see if it would work, and it's been doing fine. I brought it home and the sound is fixed; no more crackling and popping.

I'm just going to leave it disabled, since I don't need it.

Thanks a lot for the help, musk. Now to enjoy some TF2 and Warhammer Online!

 

http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/fc/rockon.gif Johnathan_Miller. Glad it's fixed for you!

@ firedreamer
I'm not sure if that would be a software or hardware problem, but you will probably get a quicker response in Software , click the New Thread button in the upper left of the page.

 

I'm sorry for the untimely bump, but my PC is also currently falling to the same symptoms but I'm unable to follow the remedy. My PC was recently attacked by a virus which meant I had to enter safe mode and restore factory conditions (I didnt know what else to do, it wouldnt turn on in normal mode).

This fortuitously worked for me, but I am left with the before described clicking background noise from the same places. Scrolling on web browsers, loading web pages, clicking with the mouse all causing irritating noises.

Anyway, I hope you guys can help me out also, here are my list of Sound, video and game controllers:

Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drivers
Legacy Video Capture Devices
Media Control Devices
Sigmatel High Definition Audio CODEC
Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit
Unimodem Half-Duplex Audio Device
Video Codecs

Only Sigmatel, Sound Blaster and Unimodem can be disabled and so far, doing so has not been helping.

I hope you can help, if you need any further information, I will provide it asap.

Thanks