Noise problem with laptop, buzzing/crackling

[Vinny]

Hey everyone,

Just about midway through boot up on my XP laptop I start to get buzzing and crackling coming from the physical laptop itself, not through the speakers. I know this because I have a headset plugged in.

I also get the buzzing and crackling through the headset and/or headphones even when audio is not playing and nothing audio related is open. For instance I have buzzing and crackling right now in my headphones and have nothing playing. It was buzzing throughout watching a show in Hulu for the last 20 minutes.

Any ideas? As with most laptops it's an integrated audio card so I really don't think switching out the card is an option. I could try to reinstall drivers, however this was a machine designed for Vista, Vista sucks so I put XP 64 bit Prof. on it (it runs a 64 bit AMD) and the drivers are insanely hard to find as Windows never seems to give proper support for 64bit XP.

I'm open to literally anything as the crackling drives me out of my mind.

Thanks!

~V

[glc]

Is your cell phone anywhere near the laptop?

That laptop will run 32 bit XP fine, and a full set of drivers is available.

[Vinny]

Hmmm, will definitely pay more attention to the cell phone proximity, good call glc.

As for 64bit being a bit troublesome... wouldn't it be a waste to run 32 bit? I mean, I have the processor, may as well use it right?

[glc]

With less than 3.25gb of ram, using a 64 bit OS is a waste.