Hello, Maybe some one can help me before I go and buy a new sound card this week. I am having a problem with the sound on my computer. No matter what type of file I play or in which program I run it with the sound is very slooow and distorted. The sound worked at one time and does work very rarley for a day or so. I use windows xp sp1, REALTEK ac"97 intergrated sound, on a compaq s4020wm desktop computer. I have the latest drivers from compaq for the sound card. Any help any one can give would be great.
ThanksAnd your operating system would be...

[glb]Flame[/glb]Hello, how are you? First of all check your speakers and their volume. The best way is to check your sound card with different speakers.
It the above doesn't solve your problem then you must reinstall the drivers of your sound card. Goto the device manager and remove your sound card by selecting your sound card i-e "realtek ac 97 " and then select "scan for hardware changes". When your sound card has been detected, install the drivers. Be sure not to install your latest drivers which you have got. Try to install previous drivers and then check wheather your sound card is working properly. If yes then the problem must be with your latest drivers.
If this wont solve your problem, then you must check the volume properties and settings for sound card in controle pannel that they all are okay.
The last check is that arrrange another hard disk with operating system installed on it from any friend or relative. Then remove your hard disk and connect that hard disk and install your sound card on that operating system. Then check the sound quality.

If every thing fails then.....

Hope this will solve your problem. Tqake care of you and others and be happy.
Bye...
Dur-E-Wahab
I senn this problem before, ACTUALLY i created this problem on my comp...

here goes, if your sound card have a kareoke mode then you most probobly changed the "KEY"  option to -4, try looking somewhere in the config of the drivers, if you have soundman drivers then you sound have a bue icon in BOTTON right icon SET, double click this icon and change the "KEY" option to 0.

if you dont have soundman driver try looking for the equlizer of the driver and look for an option called "KEY"

hope i helpedFlame, My OS is Windows XP with sevice pack 1 as stated in my original message. Any help you could give is still needed. Thanks.

Durr-E-, Thanks for the information.  It's just to bad for me that I have already attempted everything you wrote before getting online for some help. This is crazy! I had my sound working one day so I created a recovery point  for that day and time.  a couple of days later my sound was slow so I used the recovery point and it was still slow. Anyway thanks for the help.