Buzzing & distortion on XP Pro

[Arrow]

Everything was fine for years but suddenly whenever any web page is loading, irrespective of using Internet explorer, Opera or Mozilla a kind of buzzing pans back and forth between the speakers distorting the audio and as soon as the page loading is finished the audio returns to normal.

Came on suddenly whilst I had quiet background music playing on my system as usual.

I have win2k pro on another partition and that still works fine. No audio problems

I tried uninstalling all audio related software and reinstalled the audio drivers on XP Pro (soundblaster) to no avail. Device manager indicated everything was fine for all audio stuff listed.

In the end I reformatted and reinstalled XP Pro and immediately got the same problem with a fresh install.

I'm at a loss!

Everything else works fine.

Compaq evo 510 sff, p4, 2 ghz, 760mbram. XP PRo/SP2

Edited December 30, 2008 by Arrow

[Arrow]

This is getting weird.

The same thing also began happening with win2k pro.

Not only that it also happened with a previously working fine XP home install on a different HDD.

I changed the soundcard with one from another machine - after uninstalling all drivers and associated software, then installing different drivers for the other card and it replicated the same faults.

Then with the original sound card installed again, I popped in an even older HDD that has a very minimal install of XP Pro on it, and it works fine without any buzzing or interference.

Only problem now is - this is an ancient HDD that is on it's last legs which is why I stopped using it in the first place

I can exclude microsoft updates from the equation because I fully updated this old HDD and is still fine.

On the problem installations high speed downloads, av updater or watching streaming movies does not cause this buzzing so it can't just be to do with load or cpu use.