Hi all,

For the last few weeks, whilst playing music/videos on my Sony Vaio laptop, the sound flickers and stutters when the CPU activity increases or when there is hard drive activity (for example, when I load another program). This is obviously causing some form of interference with the sound. It never used to do this before; audio playback used to continute to sound smooth and uninterrupted whilst I was using the laptop for other things. Disabling services and statup processes reduced the problem, but that was only because there was less for the system to execute, therefore less processing activity, but this isnt really a solution. It is as if there must be nothing running at all in order to achieve continuing seamless playback.
The sound card uses RealTek audio drivers, which I have obtained from the Sony Vaio website.
(OS: WinXP Service Pack 1 - might I need service pack 2?)

Cheers,
Tristan

OMG i have the same problem!
I was searching for a thread exactly like this. I'm running a SB Live external sound card through my IBM thinkpad, but it's not the sound card's fault. I know this for sure, since it happens when I use the onboard audio as well. It happens mostly when I "Right click" items on the desktop, but also happens whenever the light for the CPU blinks. PLEASE HELP, as I'm losing hope.
-James

Any news on what the fix is for this?
I too have sony laptop and the sound has gone funny ie flickers/ stutters when active hard disk activity

using win xp sp2
Please help need to watch DVD film uninterupted

Well, for starters, you guys might want to take a look at THIS article. If you would like to try this procedure, click on the link in #1 under QUICK SOLUTION and let me know if this helps. There are other things you can do to help alleviate the problem, but try the above procedure first and post back.

 

 *UPDATED ON 12-4-07*: The link I originally provided has expired. Use the link Krawlspace has provided below!

So it has been 7 days now since I responded to your posts. Did any of you THREE GUYS get any results? C'mon now...someone?

Hey! This actually worked. I have had my sony vaio for less than a year, and have been dealing with the stuttering since it was about 3 months old. I followed the instructions in your post and it is fixed!!!

THANK YOU!!!

You're very welcome! Glad it worked for you.

 I was in the process of repairing a friends HP laptop, typical malware flush, and all was good except for the stuttering sound.

It happened on startup, when playing MP3 files, WAV files, or any removable media.

This narrowed it to the HD.

The only common link to the problem was the HD activity light was on when the stuttering occured.

I had read on several forums about the DMA/PIO switch, and had tried to reset it several times from Device Manager, only to have it revert right back to PIO every time.

My next step was to wipe and reinstall XP, but then I found this wonderful thread, and the link to the even more wonderful little piece of script.

Ran it, rebooted, problem solved.

Many thanks to Super Dave for the link.

BTW the link he provides in his post is about to die according to it's redirect page, so here is the new link to the overview page, and the direct link to the script page.

Thank YOU for updating the link, Krawlspace!

Ahhh... this is downright heart-warming.   Good to see you guys all learning from each other, getting around this issue.  And WELCOME to you new members here!  I've never seen such activity from new registered users in a thread before.  Thanks SuperDave and all!

 I have had the same studdering problem on an Acer notebook with XP SP2 as well as a load of other similar problems that have greatly slowed my computer and could not be fixed by wiping the drive.  This did the trick.  THANK YOU!