Harsh sound from any speaker or headset during any audio playback

I think your problems are due to your bad attitude and self-entitlement.

That kind of remark is uncalled for and extremely unhelpful. It doesn't cost anything to be courteous.

@Jim - how true. You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.

@faizalenu - d00d, you need a chill pill. I've owned 4 Dell laptops including this one, a Latitude 510 (still running), a Latitude 620 (untimely mobo failure out of warranty) and an Inspiron 1501 that still is a good unit once I upgraded its Vista Basic to XP Pro. I have built dozens of desktop units, mostly high-end gaming. Been around the business since the days of Cobol-Fortran-Basic. Not a n00b. I currently work with life/safety related programmable microprocessors.

*back to our update in progress*

Jim, I ran that Intel patch for Rapid Storage Technology last night. I'm not sure if it will do any good but it did install with no hiccups. During shutdown, more updates (12 of them) installed. I made a restore point before I shut down so I can get rid of the updates, just in case they cause trouble. Just don't have time this morning to give the system a full test.

As a note, the reason I removed SyncUP was due to being unable to convince it to stay dormant. There were big latency spikes right before it would crash, so that looked like an issue.

JIm, I've searched for that farked driver's KB number, the one that causes issues, just for reference. Is it possible you wrote it down somewhere?

I'll post back after I've ran the sound & video real hard.

Ray   (not a computer n00b)

Ray,  the relevant thread here on that particular issue is Stuttering/Buzzing Sound During Audio/Video Playback,  The actual solution -- for the Inspiron 1545 and 1750 models -- comes on page 3 of the thread, posted by "mao.tsetung" who says that there was no KB number and that the bad version was MS Update: Intel - Storage - Intel(R) ICH9M-E/M SATA AHCI Controller released in June, 2011.

Someone else says the bad version was 8.2.0.1001, dated June 2011 published 13/10/2011. I don't think there is much useful in the thread after about page 5 because it gets taken over by people with different models.

Well, here's what's gone on since my last post. Received a restore disc from Dell after I determined the restore image on the hdd had some issues during the first restore. Okay, the same missing dll's and files were complained about using the new Dell restore disk for restore number two. Not sure why, since I found them on the restore disk. Go figure.

Now, out of curiosity, since I had nothing to lose at this point, I borrowed a full copy of Win 7, used that with the provided drivers disc to reload the system. My laptop now performs like is should. I'm not sure why I had to do it this way but it worked for me. YMMV.

I've been very careful to set restore points before each Windows update and no more than two major programs installed at a time. Max DPC latency is staying under 1,200 microseconds, mostly @ 300 microseconds average, the only major glitch is from APCI Battery management, consistently every 65 seconds. Still, even that battery charge glitch is usually under 1,000 microseconds each time and does not affect audio.

Audio quality seems better now, no grinding sounds except for the sound quality of the on-board speakers. Well, it is a laptop, ya know and there's only so much space in the housing. If this thing does have a sub-woofer as advertised, I can't get it to turn on, find a setting for sub-woofer volume or maybe I just don't hear it that well. I am an old d00d with bad hearing, after all. Sounds great through external speakers, though. Ask my downstairs neighbor, he'll tell you how well Robin Trower sounded..

So, I'm not sure if I call this a fix or not, since it had to be done "The Hard Way", so to speak. And when it comes down to it, I never really found the root of the problem, either. New Laptop Gremlin? I dunno . . .

One last thing, I did have MS Word 2003 and Excel 2003 quit on me this morning, would not start in any mode, so I had to reload the apps. Oh well . . .

Ray

Thanks for the update Ray. I saw your post yesterday too that I guess got deleted. It is not reassuring if Dell is using flawed images.