Curse

Darr · Feb 09, 2006, 08:44 PM // 20:44

Hello, first and foremost thank you very much for taking the time to read this. This is the problem that I am having. I am hearing a stuttering sound with all of the sound effects and music in GW. It appears to affect my whole system after it happens until I restart my computer.
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When I start guild wars there is no problem. I continue to play about 30 minutes to an hour, and then the sound start to stutter. This also slows down my computer’s frame rate a little, and makes it a little choppy (brings it from a normal 30 fps to about 18 fps). It starts when I play my Protection Bonder in SF. I have everyone Life Bonded and Balth Spirit & essence bond. When the fighting gets intense and I have lots of energy regeneration going on (from essence bond & balth spirit + life bond in SF). I notice lots of sound effects are playing. After a few moments in combat this is when my sound will start to stutter and break up. If I play longer (about 1-2 hours) it then bugs out the sound completely and no sounds will play until I reboot the computer.

If I shut down GW while the sound is stuttering the sound on the computer will be normal. If I shut down GW after the sound has gone out completely there is no sound in Windows, and I have to restart the computer before it corrects, and sounds will play again. Another interesting thing is that when I shut down GW when the sound is stuttering, and then start guild wars again it does not correct the problem and the sound still stutters.
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This never happened before the Pre-Faction weekend update, and it appears that after the update this has happened about 6 – 7 times.

I have changed the setting in Dxdiag Sound Hardware Acceleration from Max to Min to None. I have updated my sound drivers to the current driver. I have reinstalled the sound card, but it still happens. Does anyone else have any advice? Thanks!
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HP Media Center 864n w/ upgrades
Intel Pentium 4 2.66 GHz -- 400/533 MHz Front side -- Socket mPGA478
Motherboard MSI MS-6577 version 2.1
1GB 266DDR PC2100 RAM

ATI Radon 9550 128 MB / flashed to 9600Pro
ATI Omega drivers

160GB 7200 rpm Ultra-IDE hard drive
48x CD-ROM drive
HP DVD+R/RW Drive:
On-board RealTek 8101L 10/100 Ethernet
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 24-bit sound card with Dolby 5.1 and analog surround sound (does not have on-the-card IEEE-1394)
ProMedia 2.1, 200 watt, three piece speaker system (THX certified)

Josh · Feb 09, 2006, 08:57 PM // 20:57

By any chance did you download that DirectSound Pak or whatever it was called that was released for Guild Wars a while ago?

If so, un-install that and try it.

Darr · Feb 09, 2006, 09:07 PM // 21:07

I have not downloaded any DirectSound Pak for GW so far. Unless they added it as a free update that was streamed.

Josh · Feb 09, 2006, 09:42 PM // 21:42

Maybe your Power Supply? I'm not sure on your PSU though if it's only happening after the Faction Event.

200W seems quite small for your rig.

EternalTempest · Feb 10, 2006, 12:13 AM // 00:13

Check to see if you have any new drivers for your card:
http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/su.asp

May want to double check your dirext X - you can install the most current version here - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.aspx

If this happened after an update, an uninstall & re-install may also fix this (but I would save this for a latter attempt). After one of the updates I had got the client stuck on "connecting" then times out. Turned out update corrupted my gw.dat file and I had to remove and re-install.

shadowfell · Feb 10, 2006, 12:32 AM // 00:32

I get stuttering sound too, but only in the fire chain

Darr · Feb 10, 2006, 06:24 PM // 18:24

Good to know that i am not the only one to have this problem. So far i have updated my sound drivers again, i went from omega drivers to the new ATI Cat drivers released this month.

As for my 200 watt PSU i dont know if this is causing problems or not, but so far i have not had problems with this computer for about 1 year after all my upgrades. I was thinking of messing around with the PCI latentcy settings, but i dont know if this will help.

I think this might be one of those ghost in the system sort of things. Im probably going to have to reinstall GW, then reinstall all drivers, or etc. Hopefully i wont have to go that far. I was hoping that maybe someone had this problem and knew the solution.

I think it is some sort of problem with to many sounds playing at once (30+_ sound clips), and maybe something like a .dll corruption is happening. Again thanks for the help!

EternalTempest · Feb 10, 2006, 08:00 PM // 20:00

Quote:

As for my 200 watt PSU i dont know if this is causing problems or not, but so far i have not had problems with this computer for about 1 year after all my upgrades. I was thinking of messing around with the PCI latentcy settings, but i dont know if this will help.

I was thinking about tweaing the PCI latency settings ... but usually don't say it due to the complexity of the issue. There have been issues with creative sound cards, latency and chipset. Since you acually know about that you may want to give it a try.