OK to shed some light on troubleshooting your issues with the audio problems posted on multiple websites.... DPC Latency Checker and RATTV3 Are key tools to find the issues and pinpoint where, why, and what drivers are causing problems. DPC Latency Checker is just so you can see if you have Latency issues or not and RATTV3 will tell you what drivers are taking too long to do their jobs. RATTV3 automatically dumps a log file every 3 min's to windows>system32>logfiles>RATTV3 in txt format it's named by the computer name. The easiest way to read the log file from what I have found is to paste special "text" into excel. Then you can narrow down your troublesome driver or component to find the issue easier. Hopefully this will help someone else. :emotion-5:
For anyone else who reads this thread and has the TS-L462C firmware problem, my advice is to read about it in Section 2 of Choppy/Skipping Audio Workarounds, and either follow yoyo12345's instructions or revert the firmware back to version DE05 if possible.
As far as the Sigmatel driver, I have never heard of one either being the cause or the solution to the problem in the 9400. More likely one of the other problems, video driver as you said, the wireless glitch, power settings, PIO mode or the optical driver firmware problem.
I've run DPC Latency and RATTV3 and so far it looks like it atapi that's causing the problem also to confirm/verify I installed my office suite and all the latency dropped to below 1000/500us leading me to believe that the atapi or maybe the chipset isn't loading or offloading processes efficently enough to keep latency down. if I open the DVDrom/CDRW drive the latency drops and the same when I close it, but still no stability in the readings other than knowing that much. Help please. LOL
ok I found that it's just the DVDrom/CDRW I have the TSST TSL462 C and with it disabled in the Device manager the latency is nearly no existent. So now to try drivers and firmware updating again I will post my results here afterwards incase anyone else is having the same problems.
I've tried updating the firmware on the drive and am now at rev 08 it's better but still terrible latency and by terrible I mean every 3us it's around 33,000us so if you have the same TS-L462C drive then there might not be a fix if my drive's not faulty.
Thanks Jim I was still in the troubleshooting mode when you first posted and was working with RATTV3 to better find the problem. I'm going to try and revert back to DE05 I'll post results once i get done.
ok Kudos to Jim and yoyo12345's directions I reflashed TG00 and so far so good not a glitch just be sure to use -NOCHECK in caps or it won't enable the nocheck option it will give a popup nocheck enabled or something like that. Thanks Guys!!!!:emotion-2::emotion-21:
After doing a clean install on this machine - there was no audio what so ever. This is using Dell's own back-up restore discs. So I went to Dell's Driver site and uploaded all the latest and greatest driver's pertaining to the asset code of my machine. I then had audio again however I soon discovered that it would glitch at times. Very frustrating to say the least. I read a the threads on this site and the ones pertaining to Wireless card are on the right track. I spent a week messing around with different things even suspecting a hardware issue. I ran an external sound card from the firewire port and still audio glitching. I needed to finally sort out whether this was a hardware issue or software issue with the drivers. Luckily I kept my old hard-drive from before I upgraded to a larger one.
All though it was full to the max and running sluggishly it had all the original driver load. So I plunked it in the slot and low and behold no audio glitching! So now I knew the problem had to be with drivers and not hardware. For those who have replaced motherboards on this issue with no resolution I feel your pain!
Now the arguous task of determining which bad driver was causing the problem. I re-installed the new larger hard-drive with the new drivers and the sound problem was back. So I used a utility called Hardware Helper to remove all of the computers drivers. (a very scary proposition) then re-booted the machine on start-up it automatically redetected most of the original drivers (except for the Connexion Modem and the Video Display driver) but guess what the audio was back to sounding normal. I then proceeded to load all the Dell suggested updated drivers one by and each time rebooting the machine and re-testing the audio for glitching. Everthing went well for everything except for the R171789 driver for Stac-92xx HD Audio which caused some glitching to occur. So I Uninstalled this driver and audio was good again. The last driver I installed was the R151519 Wireless Draft N driver. Although this driver upgrades your 1705 to take full advantage of the Draft-N card, it too caused problems with extreme audio glitching. Some others on this thread suggested disabling WI-FI when listening to audio and finding some improvement and less glitching however it does not get rid of the problem completely. So I removed this updated driver too. In the wireless utility I think you can disable N-mode and this may work but I chose just to remove this driver completely. Good luck ... I hope this helps with this problem. The Draft-N card running full out must introduce RFI which gets picked up by the High Def SYGMATEL audio card. Maybe better shielding of these devices on future designs will alleviate the problem.
I installed the Inspiron 1720's Sigma Tel Stac driver for my audio on my E1705 and installed Intel's wifi driver for my 4965 wireless N when those drivers were first available.Have never had the audio problems at all that are mentioned here.
nfiltrated
8 Posts
1
March 12th, 2010 06:00
OK to shed some light on troubleshooting your issues with the audio problems posted on multiple websites.... DPC Latency Checker and RATTV3 Are key tools to find the issues and pinpoint where, why, and what drivers are causing problems. DPC Latency Checker is just so you can see if you have Latency issues or not and RATTV3 will tell you what drivers are taking too long to do their jobs. RATTV3 automatically dumps a log file every 3 min's to windows>system32>logfiles>RATTV3 in txt format it's named by the computer name. The easiest way to read the log file from what I have found is to paste special "text" into excel. Then you can narrow down your troublesome driver or component to find the issue easier. Hopefully this will help someone else. :emotion-5:
Jim Coates
4 Operator
•
13.6K Posts
1
March 12th, 2010 10:00
For anyone else who reads this thread and has the TS-L462C firmware problem, my advice is to read about it in Section 2 of Choppy/Skipping Audio Workarounds, and either follow yoyo12345's instructions or revert the firmware back to version DE05 if possible.
Jim Coates
4 Operator
•
13.6K Posts
0
March 12th, 2010 05:00
Check out the thread Choppy/Skipping Audio Workarounds.
As far as the Sigmatel driver, I have never heard of one either being the cause or the solution to the problem in the 9400. More likely one of the other problems, video driver as you said, the wireless glitch, power settings, PIO mode or the optical driver firmware problem.
nfiltrated
8 Posts
0
March 12th, 2010 06:00
I've run DPC Latency and RATTV3 and so far it looks like it atapi that's causing the problem also to confirm/verify I installed my office suite and all the latency dropped to below 1000/500us leading me to believe that the atapi or maybe the chipset isn't loading or offloading processes efficently enough to keep latency down. if I open the DVDrom/CDRW drive the latency drops and the same when I close it, but still no stability in the readings other than knowing that much. Help please. LOL
nfiltrated
8 Posts
0
March 12th, 2010 06:00
ok I found that it's just the DVDrom/CDRW I have the TSST TSL462 C and with it disabled in the Device manager the latency is nearly no existent. So now to try drivers and firmware updating again I will post my results here afterwards incase anyone else is having the same problems.
nfiltrated
8 Posts
0
March 12th, 2010 07:00
I've tried updating the firmware on the drive and am now at rev 08 it's better but still terrible latency and by terrible I mean every 3us it's around 33,000us so if you have the same TS-L462C drive then there might not be a fix if my drive's not faulty.
nfiltrated
8 Posts
0
March 12th, 2010 10:00
Thanks Jim I was still in the troubleshooting mode when you first posted and was working with RATTV3 to better find the problem. I'm going to try and revert back to DE05 I'll post results once i get done.
nfiltrated
8 Posts
0
March 12th, 2010 11:00
ok Kudos to Jim and yoyo12345's directions I reflashed TG00 and so far so good not a glitch just be sure to use -NOCHECK in caps or it won't enable the nocheck option it will give a popup nocheck enabled or something like that. Thanks Guys!!!!:emotion-2::emotion-21:
romotec
2 Posts
0
January 12th, 2011 17:00
After doing a clean install on this machine - there was no audio what so ever. This is using Dell's own back-up restore discs. So I went to Dell's Driver site and uploaded all the latest and greatest driver's pertaining to the asset code of my machine. I then had audio again however I soon discovered that it would glitch at times. Very frustrating to say the least. I read a the threads on this site and the ones pertaining to Wireless card are on the right track. I spent a week messing around with different things even suspecting a hardware issue. I ran an external sound card from the firewire port and still audio glitching. I needed to finally sort out whether this was a hardware issue or software issue with the drivers. Luckily I kept my old hard-drive from before I upgraded to a larger one.
All though it was full to the max and running sluggishly it had all the original driver load. So I plunked it in the slot and low and behold no audio glitching! So now I knew the problem had to be with drivers and not hardware. For those who have replaced motherboards on this issue with no resolution I feel your pain!
Now the arguous task of determining which bad driver was causing the problem. I re-installed the new larger hard-drive with the new drivers and the sound problem was back. So I used a utility called Hardware Helper to remove all of the computers drivers. (a very scary proposition) then re-booted the machine on start-up it automatically redetected most of the original drivers (except for the Connexion Modem and the Video Display driver) but guess what the audio was back to sounding normal. I then proceeded to load all the Dell suggested updated drivers one by and each time rebooting the machine and re-testing the audio for glitching. Everthing went well for everything except for the R171789 driver for Stac-92xx HD Audio which caused some glitching to occur. So I Uninstalled this driver and audio was good again. The last driver I installed was the R151519 Wireless Draft N driver. Although this driver upgrades your 1705 to take full advantage of the Draft-N card, it too caused problems with extreme audio glitching. Some others on this thread suggested disabling WI-FI when listening to audio and finding some improvement and less glitching however it does not get rid of the problem completely. So I removed this updated driver too. In the wireless utility I think you can disable N-mode and this may work but I chose just to remove this driver completely. Good luck ... I hope this helps with this problem. The Draft-N card running full out must introduce RFI which gets picked up by the High Def SYGMATEL audio card. Maybe better shielding of these devices on future designs will alleviate the problem.
dgkpcon
3.6K Posts
0
January 15th, 2011 21:00
Just an FYI,
I installed the Inspiron 1720's Sigma Tel Stac driver for my audio on my E1705 and installed Intel's wifi driver for my 4965 wireless N when those drivers were first available.Have never had the audio problems at all that are mentioned here.