My girlfriend has a Dell Dimension 3000 desktop and whenever she plays audio directly from the HD it's all choppy/lagged out. However, when she plays audio from a cd in the dvd burner, audio is fine as long as she don't do much.

Is this a cpu problem where it's not able to handle the load as it's only a Celeron 2.66ghz?

Edited April 2, 200620 yr by sidefx

Would turning off on-board audio and adding a Sound Card improve this audio problem as it either could be a bad on-board sound device or by installing a Sound Card help aleviate some CPU processing power from the CPU?

have you tried updating the chipset drivers? i would of thought even the most basic onboard sound should be able to handle playing audio!

seems like a transfer problem between the hdd and the motherboard. upgrade the mobo / chipset drivers. or maybe the hdd is pointing out that it's dying.

DMA enabled for the HDD? What is the CPU usage when it's playing?

Big Unknown FACT! A PC really doesn't multi task, unless of course you have more than one CPU.

(and, most of us don't.....yet)

It runs all its TSR's, Services and whatever you're trying to do, like play music, in time slices. The more you ask the CPU to do, the narrower those time slices.

While playing Sol or doing the internet these time slices don't show up at all. But load your CPU down with a dozen or more TSR's (resident programs running in the background) and fourty or more Services then ask it to play music or videos....and you've got big problems!

When I do something that needs total CPU attention, I use a little program called "End It All 2" to shut down all running programs on my PC. I use it before installing new software, playing DVD Movies or running Defrag.

If you'd like to have it, you can download it from My Download Site.

Grab NTREGOPT while you're there. It's a great little Registry Optimizer.

A gig or more of ram can help. A good clean and well defragged HD can help.

But, the biggest help of all is what I do for a living.....a complete Tune-UP.

Remove every TSR and SERVICE that you don't absolutely need to run windows.

Then strip every file out of your hard drive that's not required and defrag it.

Finally, you'll most likely be able to play music or anything else with NO problems.

If not....drop me a PM....there's more tricks in my 'Trick Bag'.

Good Luck,

Andromeda

Edited April 2, 200620 yr by Andromeda43

have you tried updating the chipset drivers? i would of thought even the most basic onboard sound should be able to handle playing audio!

Yes I have.

DMA enabled for the HDD? What is the CPU usage when it's playing?

UDMA is enabled and the CPU usage didn't go above 24% when playing a song in winamp.

I have tried different players and same problem exists.

If the disk activity is heavy, the problem is probably with the hard drive.

Try defragging it.

Edited April 4, 200620 yr by LLXX

unless of course you have more than one CPU.

Or a single CPU with SMT (e.g. Hyperthreading)...or a single CPU with multiple cores. Sorry, it just required some clarification.

Of course, the current line of Celeron CPUs don't have either. I would expect them to get dual cores at some point though.