Audio breakup when online, partially unresponsive touchpad, dodgy keyboard. Why??

Hi everyone,

So I have multiple issues, and I'm wondering if there's a common hardware issue connecting them.

When downloading pretty much anything from the internet, any audio playing from any source will glitch and lag. It's a long, slow, very digital kind of breakup. I've reinstalled audio drivers multiple times, tried altering the priorities of various software, deactivating various features, with no luck. This has been the case for a while.

Then last week two things went wrong within a day of each other.

The touchpad left-button stopped working, as did the tap-to-click feature on the tracking pad. I can still use it to move the cursor and the right button still works too. It's not a sensitivity or button-assignment issue. Driver update was unhelpful.

Shortly after that, the keyboard began assigning multiple characters to certain keystrokes. It's inconsistent, I can write this mostly fine, but it seems to get worse when the CPU is under more stress. Trying to type an email when the 'O' button deactivates your wireless is pretty annoying.

I was thinking there might be an underlying hardware problem, since all attempts to fix these issues have been totally unsuccessful. I was considering buying and installing a new motherboard but they appear to be difficult to find for my model... I also have no idea if that would actually help.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Here's my vital info:

HP Pavilion DV7 6c52ea Entertainment Notebook
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Service Pack 1
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz
8GB RAM
Sys Board: 1800 10.5A
Sys BIOS: F.1C

Thanks guys.

 

Welcome to Major Geeks!

Try going to the Malware Forum and running the steps in the "Read Me First" thread. It's possible this could be a virus/malware issue. In any case, it's much less expensive to rule this out before you start spending money on parts.

If this fails, backup your data and run the factory restore (shown in the BIOS startup screen) to restore Win 7 to its original settings.

Hope this helps.

 

I agree completely with gman, you need to rule out malware before you start tearing your box apart. Do you regularly run any antivirus/anti-malware software on your system? If you do then run a full (deep) scan. If you come up clean, you should scan it with another product. You can do an online scan (nothing to install) at the following link:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=149856

You can also download and install a couple of excellent free products with which to scan your system on a regular basis, regardless of the outcome of this current problem.

Malwarebytes Anti-malware: http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/malwarebytes_anti_malware.html
SUPERAntiSpyware: http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/superantispyware_free.html

If you come up clean after all three of these scans then we can talk about addressing supposed hardware/driver problems. If you come up infected, make sure to post a message here ASAP and you'll be advised on what to do next.

 

Thanks guys. I have a subscription to Avast. I've run a full system scan, as well as using the free ESET scan provided in rustysavage's link. Both came up totally clean. I'm not sure what the consensus on Avast is, but if there's software that's considered superior, I'll happily run another scan with it.

I didn't mention it earlier but I also ran CHKDSK about a week ago and had no problems. I might schedule another one today just to be sure.

I also noticed at startup today that tap-to-click on the trackpad was responding briefly, although not in the normal way. It's still not working correctly but that might go some way to suggest it's not an irreversible hardware issue.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. You guys and this site are excellent.

 

Babyshakes, Avast is fine, even a favorite among many forum regulars. As far as head to head tests go, all antivirus software rises and falls in efficacy over time. Right now, Avast is high on the list. You've run two antivirus scanners without any sign of malware so the chance of this being malware related is very small. Nevertheless, it's still a possibility. If it were me, I would download a couple of freeware anti-malware apps that are good to have on your computer even if you are not having a problem, so that you can run them in addition to the Avast. They are:

Malwarebytes Anti-malware: Malwarebyte's Anti-malware: http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/malwarebytes_anti_malware.html

and

Hitman Pro: http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/hitman_pro.html

Download them, install them, and run a full scan with each one. Then, post your findings in this thread and we'll go from there.

Good luck !

 

So I also ran Malware Bytes and HitmanPro. They each caught a few problems (I hadn't realised you could get such inconsistent results between leading anti-malware software, very educational!) Here's the results:

HitmanPro:

Malware
C:\Windows\AutoKMS.exe
Size . . . . . . . : 472,576 bytes
Age . . . . . . . : 580.9 days (2012-05-27 16:52:01)
Entropy . . . . . : 5.3
SHA-256 . . . . . : 2E546AF1B6BFC9A174CAAA5711651B8819A84A5E0024DF93C0DA65B2509FCF49
Needs elevation . : Yes
Product . . . . . : AutoKMS
Publisher . . . . : Microsoft
Description . . . : AutoKMS
Version . . . . . : 2.0.0.0
Copyright . . . . : CODYQX4
> G Data . . . . . . : Trojan.Generic.4710784
> Bitdefender . . . : Trojan.Generic.4710784
Fuzzy . . . . . . : 102.0

MalwareBytes:

Scan type: Full scan (C:\|D:\|E:\|)
Scan options enabled: Memory | Startup | Registry | File System | Heuristics/Extra | Heuristics/Shuriken | PUP | PUM
Scan options disabled: P2P
Objects scanned: 463171
Time elapsed: 1 hour(s), 12 minute(s), 4 second(s)

Memory Processes Detected: 1
C:\Users\Hunter\AppData\Roaming\Search Protection\SearchProtection.exe (PUP.Optional.SearchProtection.A) -> 5244 -> Delete on reboot.

Memory Modules Detected: 0
(No malicious items detected)

Registry Keys Detected: 0
(No malicious items detected)

Registry Values Detected: 1
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run|SearchProtection (PUP.Optional.SearchProtection.A) -> Data: "C:\Users\Hunter\AppData\Roaming\Search Protection\SearchProtection.EXE" /autostart -> Quarantined and deleted successfully.

Registry Data Items Detected: 0
(No malicious items detected)

Folders Detected: 0
(No malicious items detected)

Files Detected: 1
C:\Users\Hunter\AppData\Roaming\Search Protection\SearchProtection.exe (PUP.Optional.SearchProtection.A) -> Delete on reboot.

(end)

Unfortunately, removing these files hasn't fixed the problem with the keyboard/touchpad, but I have noticed that over the course of all my efforts with issue with audio breakup is significantly improved.

 

Hi babyshakes, There are still a few things to do before you start buying hardware.
First we should check the condition of your hard drive:

Click on Start Menu
Click on Run:
Type the following into the RUN box

chkdsk /r

Hit [Enter]

The chkdsk program checks the condition of your hard drive and attempts to repair any errors that it finds.
It may take several hours on a large drive so be patient.

 

Finally had time to run CHKDSK, it took about 4 hours and I wanted to be able to sit with it. Since then, the following is happening.

Tap-to-click is working on the touchpad, but it's dependent on one condition - that the right touchpad button is mapped as the primary action. If I swap that back to secondary, tap-to-click stops working. Under neither condition does the left button work.

Keyboard is still intermittently failing. A moment ago it was skipping tracks in iTunes and opening new applications just from my typing. It's fine again now.

Audio crackle during downloading seems to have improved greatly - right now, it's not happening at all.

Here's the CHKDSK results:

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
275968 file records processed. File verification completed.
377 large file records processed. 0 bad file records processed. 0 EA records processed. 60 reparse records processed. CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
369898 index entries processed. Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned. 0 unindexed files recovered. CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
275968 file SDs/SIDs processed. Cleaning up 15 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 15 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 15 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
46966 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
34412584 USN bytes processed. Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
275952 files processed. File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
104595037 free clusters processed. Free space verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

951244799 KB total disk space.
532339372 KB in 218353 files.
119332 KB in 46967 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
405947 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
418380148 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
237811199 total allocation units on disk.
104595037 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
00 36 04 00 74 0c 04 00 8b 4e 07 00 00 00 00 00 .6..t....N......
00 46 00 00 3c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 .F..<...........
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.

 

Even if you have a 1TB drive, four hours for CHKDSK to finish is a sign that the drive is failing.

If the PC is still undr warranty, I would contact HP ASAP to arrange for a replacement drive. If not, you'll need to buy a new drive and order a set of DVD restore discs from HP.

If you have not already done so, back up all your files immediately while the drive is still working (albeit badly).

 

Correction on the above post: If you ran chkdsk /r, the four hour time may not be abnormal.

Given the number of issues you're having, I would try running a factory restore after backing up your data (on an HP, it's usually hitting "ESC" at startup followed by choosing the recovery option). If the problem persists after this, my guess is there may be an issue with the hard drive CHKDSK isn't catching.

 

Well a factory restore is better than a failing drive. Thanks so much for your help, I've got most files backed up so when I've got time in the coming week I'll kick off the restore. I'll make sure to post again and let you know how it went!

Thanks again both of you. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help!

 

Back again.

I've finally had time to back everything up and run a factory restore, and sadly none of the problems are fixed. I've been using an external keyboard & mouse which are both working fine.

So where to from here? Which part would be the likeliest candidate for replacement? And would it be totally reckless for someone like me (who has never done anything more complicated in terms of hardware than adding some RAM) to try to do it themselves?