distorted sound, high DPC Latency

Dear Major Geeks, I've tried to fix this myself but now need help. The sound on our laptop when playing youtube, cd's or even the startup sound is distorted, scratchy, jumpy. I've tried switching from Mediaplayer which is bad to VLC Media player and it didn't make a lot of difference. I've used all the malware you have recommeded in the past, defraged, cleaned the registry, then went into the device manager and updated all drivers, then disabled and re-enabled one at a time all the the devices they said were safe to do, while the DPC Latency checker was running. It is often solid red right to the top. Nothing really stopped it. My husband feels it started happened after trying to copy a CD. It is a 510 HP laptop running XP. Thanks so much for your help. Judy

 

Thanks, I had no idea if it was software, hardware, drivers...... hope someone comes up with something.

 

It is the XP Home edition. Will it make a difference with the links you gave? Also, even when I'm not using sound, such as opening a program the DPC spikes (goes solid red)

 

Well, I installed the 2006 and 2009 chipset drivers, restarted the computer and sound is still distorted and the DPC Latency Checker looks better until I open any program, or do anything and then it is back up solid red. Any other ideas? Do you need more information?

 

I wonder if this could be caused by the drive transfer speeds reverting to PIO.

http://winhlp.com/node/10

 

The DPC latency checker is a very small, free tool to help with diagnostics. Unfortunately doing the things it suggested didn't work. I don't think I can go back before we played the CD (sometime around thanksgiving) because I've done so much good clean up work with everything else. Well, I guess I could try. The PIO sounds like it could be the problem. It is even affecting the "microsoft" sound. Is there any other way to fix this other than going back before Thanksgiving or would reinstalling windows work? You are all amazing and i appreciate the help. My husband is looking to see if it was a sony cd. But this could be the problem.

 

FIXED!!! The IDE ATA and ATAPI wasn"t in DMA, but was in PIO mode (whatever that means I uninstalled that driver and when I shut it down and restarted it, it came back in DMA mode and sounds normal and the Latency checker is back in the green! Unbelievable and many thanks.

 

Great news!