Sound Crackles, Slow Boot; Some Ideas?

[WayneLigon]

The other night I was getting ready to log off from World of Warcraft when all of a sudden the game lags and locks for a bit, and my sound starts repeating the last little chunk of sound it got from the game. This happens a couple more times before I can log off. OK, it was near patch time and I was in a city. Lag happens.

Then I go back into the game and the lag is gone but the snapcracklepop on the speakers is really noticeable. I leave, and reboot. Then I notice my machine is really, really slow to boot up. To the point where I don't think it even is. It's been that way ever since. Now the sounds crackles, though not nearly as badly, when Windows plays the opening music, or when I play an audio file.

Nothing shows up in event viewer. Direct X diagnostics check out fine. I tried dropping the audio acceleration but that didn't help.

I have the latest drivers. I have an updated Norton's and Microsofts antispyware; both report I'm clean. I used MSCONFIG to look at my startup programs and I don't see anything in there I recognize as a bad thing. My hard drive is defragged. The attachment shows my startup programs.

Any ideas on the sudden slow bootup? What could possible cause that?

I have:

Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)
System Manufacturer: INTEL_
System Model: D865GBF_
Motherboard Chipset Intel Springdale-G i865G
BIOS: BIOS Date: 03/07/05 16:05:05 Ver: 08.00.10
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1022MB RAM
Page File: 247MB used, 4772MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

Sound Card: SB Audigy 2 ZS Audio [B800]

 

[Vascant]

I had something close to this happen and just so happens, we have the same sound card. Someone tell me why I got it beyond me, oh yeah, wanted the best..

Anyways.. I had to completely remove everything that was related to the sound card, a little easier then you may realize but the instructions are on creative labs website. Then reinstalled everything. From what I gathered and this was right after SP2 came out. The sound card has some issues with SP2 and what you are experiencing is the results.

PS: Don't try and outsmart the system and just over install and such, I had to follow the instructions to the letter to get things back to normal.