I'm experiencing issues with the soundcard in my Dell Inspiron 1720, its producing random distortions in all audio played, even in games, which results in some rather severe chopping. I thought it was the drivers, but I pulled the newest ones from the Dell website, and I still have the same issue. I can't seem too find anything on this issue. I also tried updating the chipset driver, no luck there fixing it either. This issue happens with the internal speakers, or with ANYTHING that I plug into the audio output jack on the laptop. At first I thought the chopping was video related, but while I was downloading the LATEST drivers, I played some music. I noticed the music was distorting too, so the issue seems too be related to the sound card or bus, most likely caused by a faulty driver, however, I have no EVIDENCE or resources too find out if this is the case, so if you could help me find a solution, I'd be grateful.

I am running Windows XP SP2 instead of the Vista Home PREMIUM that came with this machine, Vista was a nightmare, it idled at 52% RAM usage with everything turned off, and I have two gigs of RAM! That's like, idling Crysis while running windows.

The soundcard is a SigmaTel STAC9205X and the North bridge is the Intel Crestine PM965, South bridge is the Intel 82801HBM ICH8M.
I know this sounds basic but - have to wonder if card itself is faulty.

Whether in main chip or a discrete component - no easy way to tell .... could even be a resistor gone high or a small tantalum cap' that has gone leaky.



(Another Vista ditcher here!! )Yeah, I was thinking that. Heat of constant gaming may have killed it. CPU gets up between 154F to 180F (Depending on the game or app running) with the fan custom controlled with a third party app. And when the CPU heats up, everything heats up. Especially the left side of my keyboard, in the winter while I'm gaming, it feels like a heated keyboard. Nice feature that dell didn't intend. The P4 Prescott based laptops would LITERALLY make the keyboard to hot to comfortably use if you gamed though.

I'll probably just call dell, they'll send someone, and he'll fix it in my house the same way they had to replace the daughter board recently that the sound output/mic input ports are on. I didn't buy this thing because I can't build a computer, I bought it because I'm tired of fixing my own.

I think the soundcard is integrated into the motherboard though, almost certain it is, in which case, I'm not entirely sure if they will do an in home repair. I only paid $200 for the two year warrenty, which, is amazingly cheap, considering that covers everything including in home service.

And about vista, the whole "Windows by Tubba-Ware" look that aero gave ate too much memory and was LESS appealing than "Windows by Fisher Price". I run Royal NOIR though, leaked theme for XP that looks decent. I mean come on, 52% of RAM gone too the OS when I'm just idling with NOTHING in vista running. If I actually turned on the sidebar and crap, it'd eat about 78% of my RAM. XP eats about 17% with everything I need running in it.Looks like I didn't roll back the driver far enough. I found a driver still in the root of my C: drive from when I re-formatted and re-installed windows back in June. Thanks anyway though, it seems the newer drivers just suck.

The sad thing is, this driver is for a dell Inspiron 15XX series notebook. If anyone mentions this again, I guess I'll have too email them the driver I've got, don't got a clue where I got it off of dells site.