Computer Stuttering

[Nodnarb]

I built a new computer a little ways back and I have run into some problems with the computer stuttering every few seconds (little pauses or freezes on both the audio and video, then it resumes running normally). It seems to happen when watching videos, listening to music, or playing games. It is very frustrating as I am not computer illiterate (though I am far from advanced), but I just cannot figure out what the problem is. Another odd thing is that the stuttering will usually subside after playing certain games for a while, but I have noticed it seems to come back after I use my CD drive. I'll list the specs below, please let me know if you need any additional information. I would appreciate any help y'all could offer.

Specs:

* WD Caviar Hard Drive - 1TB
* WD Caviar Hard Drive - 500GB
* HT Omega Striker 7.1 Sound Card
* XFX GX285NZDFF GeForce GTX 285 1GB 512-bit GDDR3 Video Card
* Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor
* G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 x 2 (I have heard having all the slots occupied can result in problems. Thoughts?)
* PC Power & Cooling 750W Power Supply
* Vista 64-bit SP2, XP 32-bit SP2, Ubuntu Operating Systems (stuttering occurs in all of them)
* Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case
* SAMSUNG 22X DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S223F
* GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD4P LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard (has onboard sound, could there be a conflict between it and my third party sound card?)

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Do you have all the latest driver updates installed?

There could be a conflict with your onboard sound and the HT Omega Striker. Uninstall any drivers for the onboard and you should enter the BIOS and disable it. If you look in the motherboard manual, it will tell you where to find the onboard sound device settings.

 

[eyeCpc]

You can also leave the drivers for the onboard on in case the installed card should fail and switch off the onboard in the bios like Atomic Rooster advises as well as seeing any items for the onboard disabled in the device manager. That will prevent any further prompting for updates on that.

If you don't mind could I ask a couple of quesions here would be which version of Windows are you running(Vista 64, W7 64 with 6gb of memory in) and which media players do you generally use for video and audio?

The one or more players may need additional codecs to run smoothly or you may have to disable something that is sharing resources. If you are running XP that is known for resource conflicts when installing a sound card in the first PCI slot on different boards.

 

[Nodnarb]

Do you have all the latest driver updates installed?

There could be a conflict with your onboard sound and the HT Omega Striker. Uninstall any drivers for the onboard and you should enter the BIOS and disable it. If you look in the motherboard manual, it will tell you where to find the onboard sound device settings.

Thank you for your response, Atomic Rooster. I do have all the latest drivers installed, and I've tried wiping and reinstalling them a few times. I have uninstalled the onboard sound through Device Manger (I believe it was), wiped any drivers for it, and I disabled it through BIOS (at least I think I disabled the correct thing). Assuming I did all this in the proper manner, is it possible there could still be a conflicting issue? I am considering pulling the HT Omega Striker completely if I can't figure out what exactly the problem is, and if that doesn't work I am going to have to completely strip the computer and add components until I can replicate the issues. Obviously I'd like to have a better idea of what exactly is going wrong before I begin that process if it is at all possible.

You can also leave the drivers for the onboard on in case the installed card should fail and switch off the onboard in the bios like Atomic Rooster advises as well as seeing any items for the onboard disabled in the device manager. That will prevent any further prompting for updates on that.

If you don't mind could I ask a couple of quesions here would be which version of Windows are you running(Vista 64, W7 64 with 6gb of memory in) and which media players do you generally use for video and audio?

The one or more players may need additional codecs to run smoothly or you may have to disable something that is sharing resources. If you are running XP that is known for resource conflicts when installing a sound card in the first PCI slot on different boards.

I appreciate your help, Dodge1970. I have already removed the drivers for the onboard sound, so I suppose that ship has sailed.

I am running Vista 64-bit SP2 (along with occasionally booting into Windows 32-bit SP2 and Ubuntu). Also, I have 12GB of RAM installed, not 6; which is why I am concerned about running with all my slots filled.

For video I use WMP10 with a codec pack (I believe K-Lite?). For audio I use MediaMonkey, or sparingly WMP10.

 

[eyeCpc]

Vista comes with WMP 11 there. WMP 10 was an updated version used on XP until 11 was released. Apparently I caught the "G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB)" part of your information but missed the "x2" at the end. sorry about that one!

As long as you continue to leave the onboard disabled in the bios you shouldn't see any prompting for the usual new hardware found. With the problems being seen with the HT Omega Striker card you have that was a suggestion to save time reinstalling those if you do end up having to remove it entirely.

With all dimm slots full that can be a problem with some boards alright. But it wouldn't be limited to just those problems alone. Often the general operation of Windows will be effected as well as other programs you have on.

It's not from a lack of drivers since the support site shows Windows 7 drivers available as well as those for the 64bit Vista. http://www.htomega.com/downloads.html

Since you had both onboard and the drivers for the card on at the same time you may want to try removing them entirely now to allow Windows to perform a fresh detection of the card itself. Before removing the others you may seen them go on while Windows never made them active due to a software/driver clash.

 

[Nodnarb]

No problem missing the x2, Dodge, I should have made that clearer in my original post. Thank you for correcting my misconception about WMP, and for clarifying what you meant regarding the onboard sound. For the record, I haven't seen any unexpected new hardware prompts so I assume it is disabled correctly in the BIOS.

What other problems would I be seeing if all the dimm slots being full was the culprit? One of the people using this computer did see a BSOD once since I built it (unfortunately they restarted and didn't make note of the error message), but that is the only problem aside from the stuttering that I recall.

I will try removing the HT drivers again, thank you for the suggestion.

 

[eyeCpc]

Many were reporting problems more frequently with XP while the problems vary between systems. Gears of War is one game title that comes up more frequently seeing crashes right after starting that one up in Vista.

You can test that easy by removing a dimm or two in order to run the same programs(games, players) where the problems are being seen in case that is one of the reasons. For the blue screens try disabling the automatic restart on system failure to force a blue screen to stay on long enough rather then the immediate memory dump. Also review the event viewer logs.

The fight to get drivers on right has always been a nuisance where it may take a few times to finally see everything running strong. I thought I would caution you about that since some times you end up going back to remove and reinstall fresh again until Windows makes it work for you.

 

[Nodnarb]

Great suggestion on the blue screen, Dodge. I will be sure to do that. Yea, this is a nuisance but I really want to resolve this stuttering issue and when I tried to a fresh install a couple of times the problem persisted.

To provide some additional information, a user on a different message board suggested that my chipset drivers may not be installed correctly. So, on a whim I decided to check out DriverAgent (not sure if it's well regarded) and it's telling me that I have a few outdated drivers. Among them are the Intel ICH10 PCI Express Root Ports, which is what my sound card is installed in (unless I'm mistaken). From my (admittedly less than knowledgeable) perspective, that would imply that what the gentleman on the other board is saying is correct - my chipset drivers are not installed correctly.

Does anyone feel that this could be the problem, and if so, how do I install the correct drivers? When I try to install what I believe are the right drivers off Intel's site I can't figure out the correct ones for sure or how to install them (I think they are in INF format). Obviously this would imply that I'm a fool and I installed them incorrectly to begin with.

Any thoughts?

 

[setishock]

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-009245.htm
Use that to indentify your chipset. When you get the chipset numbers, go here and get the inf file: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/default.aspx
Once you download the inf file click on run and it installs itself.

 

[eyeCpc]

I never recommned Driver Agent or Driver Detective whatever but use the Windows update option or follow the advice setishock gave there of going directly to either the board manufacturer or the chipset manufacturer when not finding any updates from the other.

Without all the board drivers on for the essentials besides onboard sound or video if used you can run into various problems since those incluce SM bus for memory controllers as well as sata/Raid controllers if you run a sata drive.

But still keep an eye out for any blue screens for awhile since those will display error information while the event viewer logs can often pin point a manufacturer. Once you know which one then you can troubleshoot from there.