Audio sounds as though it's skipping

[Lloyd Te Kani]

Have recently revived my laptop after it had crashed, changed from Vista back to XP, re-loaded Hoster and am currently in the process of downloading some 5000 songs into my hard drive.

My problem now is that when I play back a song it sounds as if the audio is skipping quite badly. The songs start off but there is an intermittent staccato noise and the audio slows noticeably and the lyrics are quite badly out of sync. It's as if there's a dirty disk in the player but this is not the case. There is no disk in the CD drive at all. This problem is occurring after the song has been downloaded.

Assistance would be appreciated guys.

Lloyd T

[ddouglass]

How much memory does the laptop have?
Check you Task Manager while playing a song. Look at Performance tab and see what percentage of Processor time is in use and how much memory is being used. Also look at the Processes tab and see just what else is running.
Another thing that may help is to defrag your hard drive. I know you just loaded XP, but I can tell you from experience that Microsoft is the worst for not loading their stuff cleanly.

[Lloyd Te Kani]

Thanks DD, will do all those things and let you know how it goes.

LT

[Lloyd Te Kani]

My laptop has 1GB of RAM and 160 GB HD. I've defragged the system and noticed with Task Manager that CPU usage fluctuates between 1 and 100%. Hoster is the only programme running at the time. Even after doing all these things, the audio is still the same, ie music starts and is then interupted by a sound like a machine gun firing and a corresponding and very noticeable slowing of the music and the lyrics are either well ahead or well behind the music.

Any ideas??

An exasperated Lloyd

[swany]

Open hoster. Go back to task manager, processes, right click hoster, set priorities to high. There are a lot of processes going on in the background, check the priorities they should be set at normal or below.

If you are running windows media player at the same time it does take a lot of memory, if this is the case make sure you have a lot of ram upgrade if necessary 1-2GB is good.

One other thing you can do is mute your windows sounds by clicking the mixer on the small speaker or vol control in the lower right of your screen.

Back to media player, don't run it above 90% if you have the WOW effects on turn it off.

Last but not least have you gotten all the XP patches? WMP 11 or 12? Upgrade all.

[Lloyd Te Kani]

I think I may have stumbled across the problem. It seems my computer no longer recognises my CD/DVD drive. I tried to rectify this by getting it to test for the drive repeatedly but no luck and then after rebooting a couple of times, I thought the only thing to do was to back-up all my programmes and then un-install and re-install Hoster. Unfortunately because the computer thinks it no longer has a CD/DVD drive I can'y do this from my disk.

So that's where I am at present. Any further printable suggestions please apart from telling me where to put it.

Lloyd

[Lloyd Te Kani]

I've reloaded Hoster from the MTU website so that's all good. The probem now is when I bring up the CD/DVD Drives Defaults, there is no drive on it and I continually get an error message as follows,

"NMIndexStoresSvr,exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

Any suggestions please??

Lloyd.

[ddouglass]

That process belongs to Nero and is probably why you don't have any disk drive listed.
Go to the Startup folder in your start menu and delete the Nero shortcut there. Nero is grabbing the cd drive and locking it down so it is the only program that can use it. And it won't hurt the Nero operation to do this. Just makes Nero a tiny bit slower to open up when you want to start it.

[Lloyd Te Kani]

Sorry Dale, there isn't anything in my Start Up folderat all.

[Flipeoke]

To disable Nero Scout:

http://www.help2go.com/Tutorials/Sof...in_Nero_7.html

http://www.help2go.com/Tutorials/Sof...in_Nero_8.html

Hope it helps...
Flip

[ddouglass]

Thanks Flip.
I wasn't aware they had changed their method of start up. Just knew that was what was causing his problem.

[Lloyd Te Kani]

I've diabled Nero Scout as directed but things are still the same. The computer still does not recognise the CD/DVD drive and the audio output is still the same in Hoster.

[ddouglass]

The computer (Windows) doesn't recognize the drive or Hoster doesn't?

[Lloyd Te Kani]

Neither does now!

[ddouglass]

Shutdown, pop the drive out and put it back in firmly. It may have gotten loose or the contacts have gotten dirty.

[Lloyd Te Kani]

Hi Dale,

Easier said than done I'm afraid. I'm a Karaoke Op wishing I was more conversant with IT and how computers work. Can you give me a brief rundown on how to do that?

[Joe Nieves]

Hi Lloyd Te Kani
I once had a similar problem using Roxio here's what I did to fix it.

Method one:

Open your registry and manually delete Remove the Upperfilters and Lowerfilters values completely from the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Once deleted go to file save registry and reboot.

Method two:

Go to this Microsoft Web Site download guided help program Link; http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060/EN-US/
Follow instructions once done it should solve your CD problem, but keep and mind that Nero program may not work after you do this? But your Hoster will.
Good Luck Joe....

[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by Lloyd Te Kani

Hi Dale,

Easier said than done I'm afraid. I'm a Karaoke Op wishing I was more conversant with IT and how computers work. Can you give me a brief rundown on how to do that?

On the bottom of the laptop under the CD drive should be some kind of button/lever/slide that will push the CD drive out of its slot. Slide it out a bit them push it back in firmly. That should clean the contacts.

[Lloyd Te Kani]

There doesn't appear to be a button/slide/lever on my laptop except for the two that dis-engage the battery but it seems all reference to the drive has disappeared. It doesn't appear in the Device Manager either. I'm stumped. Thanks for the input also Joe but I don't want to do anything too drastic at this time until I've exhausted all the "simple" steps.

I sense that this may all have come about because of the changes I've made both in replacing Vista with XP and in changing the settings in XP in order that Hoster will run to it's fullest potential.

I want to thank you guys for your efforts but I'm going to have to rely in your knowledge and experience further.

Lloyd.

[Joe Nieves]

Hi Lloyd
ok I understand your frustration please try this

1) Go to Start highlight My Computer and right click go to properties and left click on that.
2) Click on system properties TAB Hardware then click the Device Manager button .
3) Click on the DVD/CD-Rom Drive Icon and then click the + sign you should see your DVD/CD Drive Click on it.
4) Under the general Tab you will see a box at the center marked Device status It should read This device working properly.
5) If it is (working properly) then go to the bottom box marked Device Usage.
6) Click on box arrow highlight Use This device (enable) left click.
7) Click OK button at the bottom then close out all windows
8) You may need to reboot for change to take effect.
9) If you see error massage 19, 31, 32 or 41 then you need to follow my last post to fix your CD/DVD problem.
10) No CD Drive Icon in My Computer and error message in Device manager indicates you have a problem with your registry that can't be fixed any other way.
11) Use Method Two on my previous post.

Good Luck Joe....