sound is garbled in windows

Please tell us whether you have integrated sound from the motherboard or a separate PCI sound card and if so, which make and model.  If you don't know, navigate to Device Manager, Sounds/Video/Game Controllers and click the plus sign.  What is listed there for sound devices? Are there any yellow exclamation points on any items?  How does an audio CD sound?  How about sounds from a game, if you play games?  If you have a DVD drive, how does sound from the DVD movie sound?  Giving all the info you can will help with a diagnosis.

In addition to info Europa303 requested, tell us what brand hard drive you have (eg, Samsung, Western Digital, Seagate). You can find that info in Device Manager too.

And while in Device Manager, expand the list under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and double-click on Primary IDE Channel. Then click Advanced Settings tab. Tell us what it says for Current Transfer Mode for both device 0 and device 1. Do the same thing for Secondary IDE Channel.

Ron

I also have been having the same problem on my Dimension 5100 with the audio card, I am using a soundblaster 24 live. I have tried 2 set's of speakers, one old pair of Altec Lansing with a sub, and the cheapo dell's that came with my Dimension. I know the speaker's work as I hooked them in the headphone jack of my boombox, and they sounded great, boy if I could only get that sound quality out of my computer now. I am past my warrenty period so I went out and bought another soundblaster 24 live card and replaced it, the sound came back but I can't turn up the volume without alot of distortion and hissing, All my of diognostic testing say everything is running correctly, HUH. I beg to differ, must be a default message?  I have uninstalled all the driver's and software and updated with the newest driver's from Soundblaster. I did call creative labs but got more Bull. They were useless. Thats a whole nother story. Well I looked up my Primary IDE controllers and I have the following:

Primary  Device 0 ultra DMA mode 2

               Device 1 Ultral DMA Mode 1

and on my other primary controller

              Device 0 Ultra DMA Mode 5

              Device 1  Not Applicable

I am also using a western digital HD 60gig

hope this helps and I do hope to get an answer soon.

         Thanks

             Bob

 

Hold down the f2 key and look at the audio part of the bios.

Just be carefull what you are doing as this is the brain of your computer. You don't want to chang anything else just remember to save the changes when you exit the bios

OK I have no idea what BIOS is. I'm thinking I have to hit F2 or F12 before Windows boots up....Is that right?

OK,that didn't work. I had no sound at all after that. Here is all of my technical info out of my device manager...
My Sound devices are Audio Codecs, (although tech support told me to disable them and I thought I had done this)Legacy Audio Drivers, Media Control Devices, SoundMAX Intergrated Digital Audio, Unimodem Half- Duplex Audio Device and Video Codecs.
Also, I have a Samsung SPO401N HD.
Hardware tech support told me to get rid of the Audio Codecs and install the SoundMAX. I thought I had, but, it looks like they're still there. The sound didn't change one way or the other, though.
Where to now?

Your device manager SoundMax entry indicates you have integrated audio on the motherboard, and not a separate sound card, so disabling the integrated audio in the bios is NOT the answer for you. Here is the driver for the 3000 SoundMax, which you should try downloading and installing again, even if you think you already did this. Before doing this though you should right click the SoundMax entry in device manager and delete it. Then download and install this file:  http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&releaseid=R94481&SystemID=DIM_CEL_3000&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=2430&devlib=0&typecnt=1&vercnt=3&formatcnt=1&fileid=122481

This is frustrating because you have a modern system with enough memory and this really shouldn't be happening. By chance do you have any other speakers you could plug in and try?  You should certainly try to get Dell to resolve this issue, but that may be easier said than done. One alternative you may wish to consider is to purchase a PCI sound card, which is fairly inexpensive. If you do this be sure to disable the integrated audio in the bios.  Perhaps some other folks can help with suggestions.

Konagirl,
Did you look at the Current Transfer Mode settings for both device 0 and device 1 on the Primary and Secondary IDE channels as I suggested in prior posting? I suspect your HD is running on the IDE channel in PIO mode which is too slow, causing the audio problems. It should be running in fast Ultra DMA mode 5. This seems to be a problem on the D3000, especially those with a Samsung HD.

If you post the Current Transfer mode for each device (and it's PIO) we can attempt to fix it via software. Otherwise you may have to ask Dell for a new HD from a manufacturer other than Samsung.

Ron

Konagirl,
Your HD on primary IDE channel is running in slow PIO mode and that's the problem. (Secondary channel is OK.) Let's try simple fix first. Go here and download Dell's piotodma.exe. It's a compressed file so when you double-click it, it will unzip the file pushdma.exe.

http://ftp1.us.dell.com/fixes/

Run pushdma.exe, reboot and check your primary IDE channel. Current Transfer Mode for device 0 should now read Ultra DMA mode 5, and the audio should be better now. Let's hope it stays fixed.

Unfortunately, others have noticed after a while the problem recurs. The IDE channel goes back to PIO mode because too many data errors are generated at the faster Ultra DMA speed. If that happens and you have Samsung HD, suggest you contact Dell and request new HD from either Seagate or Western Digital (not Maxtor). That seems to fix it for systems that keep reverting to PIO. You should tell Dell you ran pushdma and it worked for a while but reverted due to HD errors...

Ron

Message Edited by RoHe on 12-30-2005 10:52 AM

Thank you very much! It looks like this is the end of a very frustrating problem! The file worked like a charm and my sound is great! I am also going to contact Dell and request a new HD becuase if this fix works for longer than 6 months, I will be out of warranty and then I will be up the creek....
Thank you to everyone who helped me with this!