[Unknown Target]

Ok, I just got back from the states with a few brand new games in hand. The list includes Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, Full Spectrum Warrior, and Doom 3. I install all three. Delta Force works fine, even if the game is a bit sub-par, so I'm like, ok. I install Full Spectrum Warrior. This is where the problems start. I run FSW with no apps in the background, nothing that would use the sound, etc. My sound pipes off an onboard mobo thing and has never given me trouble before.
Now, when I run FSW, I get a strange crackling sound. Now, notice this is ONLY for voices and stuff, NOT for sound effects. In FSW, gunfire sounds ok, explosions are ok, but voices are distorted, as if every third syllable is skipped. It's annoying as hell. I've tried lowering all the detail settings to minimum - that doesn't help. I've double checked the background apps, nothing running. I downloaded a no-CD crack - no dice.
So I'm like, alright, maybe it's the game. I install Doom 3 and run it, same glitch, except now it plays the first five seconds of the voice file, then skips for 30 seconds, then plays another 5. The game is also mildly choppy. It runs smooth for 10 seconds, skips, 10 seconds, skips. Now, I KNOW this is something with my computer, because with Doom 3, I "aquired" it earlier (had to uninstall it because of space, so I re-bought it), and installed it, running it on high detail settings with no stutter. Now I run it at medium details and 800X600, and get the stutter, and that annoying voice glitch. I updated the game and installed a no-CD crack, no dice.

Any ideas? Please help!

[Kosh]

Have you tried defragmenting your hard drive? NTFS partitions are more sensitive to it then FAT32 ever was.

[ChronoReverse]

What's your sound chipset?  Perhaps it's not able to handle 48KHz and a game is trying that?

[Unknown Target]

Would defragging really help? That'll take a long time, so I only want to do it if it's completely necessary.

My chipset is...meh, I dunno. It's an Intel board, that's all I know. However, that wouldn't explain why Doom 3 worked fine before, but now it's not only sound stuttering, but graphically stuttering as well (I also just updated my graphics drivers to try to fix this - didn't work).

[CP5670]

Make sure there is no spyware crap running in the background.

[Unknown Target]

Done.

[Kosh]

Originally posted by Unknown Target
Would defragging really help? That'll take a long time, so I only want to do it if it's completely necessary.
 

It could, especially if you have installed lots of crap and haven't defragged in a while.


Just boot to safe mode and run defrag from there overnight.

[achtung]

Make sure the game is set to use analog audio instead of digital?
or vice versa? what ever your comps settings are.

[Unknown Target]

No option for that Swantz. I tried reinstalling drivers for the sound and the video card, no dice. I also used CC Cleaner to clean up my registry and files, (removed 4 gigs of useless files), still nothing. I'm still hesitant to defrag, though, any other suggestions?

[Kosh]

DEFRAGMENT!!!!!!!!!!!

[karajorma]

Even if the drive being fragmented isn't the cause of your problem you're going to have to do it sooner or later anyway.

Just fragment the drive. There's no point in us coming up with 5% chance reasons for the problem when you're refusing to look at a 60% chance reason.

[Unknown Target]

Which Hard Drive? Doom 3 is on my windows hard drive, Full Spectrum Warrior is on my Media/games hard drive. Which one should I defrag first?

[karajorma]

Do em both.

[Kosh]

It depends on which one you want to play. Personally I would recommend booting to safe mode and run the defrag program there.


As I have said before, you can defrag overnight so that you would only be sleeping while it does its thing.

[Unknown Target]

Ok, I defragged my HD (the one with Doom 3 on it). First of all, it looked like a mess. Second of all, it still looks like a mess. Third of all, the Doom 3 .pak files and other files were some of the ones that it could actually not defrag. Lastly, the games are still choppy.

[Kosh]

Did you boot to safe mode to do it?

[Unknown Target]

Yep.

[Fury]

1. Empty all temp folders.

Code: [Select]


rmdir/s/q "%SystemRoot%\Temp"
rmdir/s/q "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp"
rmdir/s/q %TEMP%
rmdir/s/q %TMP%
mkdir "%SystemRoot%\Temp"
mkdir "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp"
mkdir %TEMP%
mkdir %TMP%

2. Uninstall all games from your Windows partition.
3. Install uninstalled games to your games partition.
4. Update all drivers to your hardware. Most important ones being chipset drivers, video card drivers and audio drivers.
5. Make sure your Windows page file is located in your games partition.
6. Go to your hard drive partition properties, run error checking with automatically fix file system errors setting. Do this to all your partitions, you need to restart your computer to let it finish.
7. Check if pagefile.sys is still in C: drive, if it is, delete it. (It's a system file so it's hidden by default)
8. Defragment C: drive as many times as defragmenting takes more than 10 seconds from Windows defragmenter.
9. Move the pagefile to C: drive and restart.
10. Defragment rest of your partitions as many times as defragmenting takes more than 10 seconds from Windows defragmenter.
11. Turn off all extra programs before launching a game, like anti virus proggies.

Remember this, running error checking with automatically fix file system errors setting from time to time is important. As is running defragmenter, if your hard drive partition gets heavily fragmented, you are asking for trouble. If you defragment your partitions regularly, it will only take a moment to defragment. I usually run error checking about once a month and defragment partitions once a week.

[Kosh]

I'm just guess but another possiblity might be bit rot.......

[IPAndrews]

You're using a dodgy creative media onboard sound chip aren't you