PC Sound-skipping issues

HtR-Laser

Alright, I had a problem with Mass Effect, and assumed it was exclusive to that game, but now the problem's popping up everywhere, and that's no good. Just started a few days back, and system restore doesn't solve it.

Essentially, I'm having trouble with sound skipping or falling out of sync. In Mass Effect, it's pretty dramatic - the lip syncs are all off, and the game itself seems to run in slow motion, despite maintaining its normal framerate (around 20-40 fps on my midrange rig). In Call of Duty 4, it's minor, but all of the FMVs between missions have their sound skip at regular intervals (every second or so, in rhythm). In-game sound is fine, and I'm still getting good framerates.

It might be my sound drivers (annoying), but I worry that it might be my hard drive (bad news), since it seems to cut out at such regular intervals. I've ruled out my optical drive, because my COD4 is a steam copy.

Any advice? I'll run a defrag in a bit to see if that helps at all.

Evyl

HtR-Laser wrote: »

Alright, I had a problem with Mass Effect, and assumed it was exclusive to that game, but now the problem's popping up everywhere, and that's no good. Just started a few days back, and system restore doesn't solve it.

Essentially, I'm having trouble with sound skipping or falling out of sync. In Mass Effect, it's pretty dramatic - the lip syncs are all off, and the game itself seems to run in slow motion, despite maintaining its normal framerate (around 20-40 fps on my midrange rig). In Call of Duty 4, it's minor, but all of the FMVs between missions have their sound skip at regular intervals (every second or so, in rhythm). In-game sound is fine, and I'm still getting good framerates.

It might be my sound drivers (annoying), but I worry that it might be my hard drive (bad news), since it seems to cut out at such regular intervals. I've ruled out my optical drive, because my COD4 is a steam copy.

Any advice? I'll run a defrag in a bit to see if that helps at all.

You may have codecs attempting to filter the audio in the games, which likely eats enough CPU cycles to cause a desync.

HtR-Laser

Researching a bit, that sounds like it may be the problem. What steps do I have to take to fix the codecs?

HtR-Laser

I fixed it. Had to uninstall the IDE devices from my device manager and reboot. Sound's back in sync, but there's a slight clicking every now and then. Sounds like I should get a new hard drive.