sound and video playback extremely distorted and jumpy

[ross23dj]

i have recently completely formatted my hard drive and re-installed windows xp, the computer is about 6 months old but just needed a formatting due to too much spyware etc. After formatting my computer was working perfectly like new until now.

While tring to play some music through media player it suddenly started to distort extremely badly, it sounds very similar to the sound of a corrupted downloaded tune. you can just about make out the sound of the music but it playes very slowly and stutters. i then tried it with a video which also stutters very badly and probarbly plays at about a fifth of the speed it should play at. it is not just a problem with media player its all audio and video played through any software including all windows sounds for example a click. once any sound has been played it will contine to buzz away untill the computer is restarted. I have checked the sound and graphics card in the device manager and it says the device is working properly.

I have uninstalled the driver and reinstalled it but the problem remains, i know it is the correct driver as it is worked fine for about 2 weeks untill today and is the driver that came with the computer i have been on the packard bell website just to double check.

Could there be a problem with the actual hardware? any help would be extremely appreciated as this really is driving me insane.

[RandyL]

Hi ross23dj;

Very good information you supplied but some bits are missing.

 

A 6 month old computer that needed formatting due to spyware.

Have you repeated the same mistakes?

Are you still downloading music?

Do you still use a file sharing program?

 

What type of format did you use?

Complete or not?

Are old files on your system?

 

What antivirus program do you use?

What media player are you using?

 

It's good you checked your drivers but you might want to check from the manufacurer to see if their are better ones.

 

From your post I still suspect bad codecs/spyware/crapware programs and more.

 

It might be hardware related but you stated that after a format it worked fine "until now".

 

This might be a case of needing to do a destructive recovery or engage in a long process.

 

You supplied many clues. Can you supply a few more?

[ross23dj]

thankyou for your reply

 

yes i have repeated the same mistakes which is very stupid on my part. i still download music through limewire (file sharing program) and did recently download some codecs.

i have used system restore to take it back to the day that i reinstalled windows but unfortunatly this did not solve the problem.

 

it was a complete format, i got rid of all partitions and there were no old files at all, i completely cleaned the whole drive.

 

the media player i am using is the newest one number 11.

 

i have windows defender, norton and have done an online scan using trend micros house call, which i beleive is quite good , i apparently have a clean system.

 

The driver on the manufacturer's website is the same driver that came with the pc but i'm quite confident its not the driver as it worked fine untill yesterday and i have not changed the driver since re-installing windows.

 

unfortunatly if i do need to format and re-install windows again it will be a very lengthy process as i have a broken cd drive (thanks to the missus falling on it while it was open) i had to borrow a mates cd drive to re-install windows the time before and he is away on holiday for the next 2 weeks and as a university student i have very limited money and cant afford to buy a new one for a while.

 

once again thankyou for any help

[RandyL]

You could try a few different things.

 

Uninstall Limewire.

Install Spybot S&D and AdAware.

Stop as many programs from running at startup as you can.

Examples: Nero and Creative Sound Mixer.

 

Move your sound card to a different slot.

Check all your cables and wires.

 

You could attempt to roll back WMP11 to an earlier version.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/11/readme.aspx

 

I assume you have all the Windows updates.

 

From a command prompt run dxdiag

 

You seem to be very thorough and meticulous so you may be way ahead of me on any info I supply. I agree that housecall is excellent.

 

Good luck;

RandyL

[ross23dj]

i have run the diagnostic tool and come back with the following error:

DirectSound test results: Failure at step 19 (User verification of software): HRESULT = 0x00000000 (error code)

i have literally spent the last 2 hours on google trying to find out what this means with no joy.

Thanks again

[ross23dj]

i have now spent the whole day trying to fix this bloody computer!

 

i have formatted the hard drive again and reinstalled windows. i have definatly got all the correct drivers for all of the components as i have now triple checked them all (got them from the website for my specific model).

 

IT STILL DOSENT WORK.

 

surely now im thinking it must be a hardware maulfunction, which means i might have to deal with the idiots at PC World, which is something i'm not looking forward to.

 

i now have a completely clean computer that doesn't contain anything other than windows files and the correct drivers.

 

i have run the dxdiag again and it returned the same error

 

DirectSound test results: Failure at step 19 (User verification of software): HRESULT = 0x00000000 (error code)

 

What do you think?

[RandyL]

When running dxdiag did you click no when asked if you heard the sound.

 

Have you tried different speakers or tested yours on another computer.

 

RandyL

[ross23dj]

yeah thanks randy,

i clicked no and thats what gave me the error message, i have ruled out the speakers already as they work just fine on another computer also the fact that the video's stutter as well still leads me towards the card.

[varispeed]

What type of video files are you trying to play?

You did mention you now had a clean system with just XP and drivers installed but did you reinstall any codec packs?

Seems odd that sound and video worked fine after your initial reinstall up to when you installed codecs. If you need codecs, try the Gordian Knot codec pack on doom9.org. Don't download codec packs from limewire (I personally wouldn't download anything from limewire period)