Acer sound problems

[bduff509]

I have an Acer Aspire 3210M. I've always had small troubles with it but nothing serious. I have been having problems w/ the sound being slow lately. The device mgr. says nothing is wrong. I've tried reinstalling the drivers, downloading updated drivers and removing & reinstalling the devices. In dvc. mgr. I have ESS Solo-1 PCI AudioDrive(WDM), ESS Solo-1 SoundBlaster Compatible(WDM) & a gameport joystick controller. The SoundBlaster entry, which I don't think is original (Imay have picked that up along the way), says no drivers are needed or installed. If I play a CD the sound is fine, everything else is very slow. Any suggestions?

[GaryRouth]

Hi bduff509

. . . and Welcome to the PC Mechanic forums

The drivers at the Acer.com support site aren't very recent, if those are the ones you tried. They date from late 1999 and early 2000. [the ones at http://www.acersupport.com/desktop/a...as32xx_dl.html]. . . but you could possibly find reference drivers from Ati's website (for the video) and ESS (for the Solo1 onboard sound).

But while recent drivers play nicer with recent software, they won't necessarily help any speed/quality of playback issues. Are you still running Win98? (which is what it shipped with) or did you upgrade to WinME at some point? I'm a little surprised you have a "WDM" type driver - that's more common in the more recent Windows versions. [WDM=Windows Driver Model] If you want to double-check the sound drivers angle, uninstall any sound software in Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel. Then boot into Safe Mode and remove your "sound, video, and game controllers". Then on reboot reinstall your sound with just one set of drivers that you're sure matches your version of Windows.
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But I'm thinking that it could just be that the K62-333 that runs your box is getting bogged down. A few things that might help:
1) more memory 2) less background jobs running 3) disable the onboard sound in favor of a PCI add-in card.

1) if you've never added to the original 32mb of memory, get a few 128mb sticks of PC100 SDRAM memory and plug them in - don't get the bargain basement, but something with at least 1 yr warranty. Here's the link at Acer with what fits on your board (if you get two 128mb sticks, remove the 32mb memory that's in now & save for troubleshooting). http://www.acersupport.com/desktop/a...m_da10369.html You can't use a 256mb stick on that board. 128mb is the limit per stick.

2) From the Start/Run box, type msconfig. Once in that program, look at the Startup tab (last one on the right). Uncheck everything except your PowerProfiles (2), Systray, Explorer, your Ess audio background process, and your AntiVirus. See if playback improves.

3) If steps one and two don't help. A $30 card like the Philips Acoustic Edge should do it. You'd disable the onboard sound, uninstall the older drivers, and then install your new card.
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To save money, try doublechecking the drivers, and limiting the background jobs first. If that doesn't help, add a little memory. New sound card last. But I wouldn't spend too much on that older system: new mb/cpu combos with much more power are available for $90 (usually Amd XP's and Via KT266/or SiS chipset boards)

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[bduff509]

Gary, Thanks a million. I've been trying to get this straightened out for a long time. I guess I should have gone into more detail in my first post. I started out with a stock Acer & originally tried to upgrade the ram (a single 256Mb card bad choice, I guess) & added a cd burner and 40 Gb H.D. with the intent of downloading music. I also installed Audio Cleaning Lab as I have about 150 20-30 yr.old albums & tapes I wanted to clean up & record on cd. The ram, burner & program went in ok. Where I started having trouble was with the H.D. I screwed that up pretty good so, fortunately I could take it into work where the MIS Mgr. straighted it out for me. He put the 40 Gb as the C drive & the 3 Gb as the D drive so I would still have the original drivers. The 3Gb had the original Win98 but since it was new there were always little problems with it. The 40 Gb has Win98SE which has worked very well. I think my sound problem may have come from a Windows Update. I remember that, at one point there was an updated driver that I downloaded from there but it didn't have any immediate effect on the sound so I didn't think too much of it. I finally found & identified my sound chip(ES1938S). It is only associated with 98. SE has a different driver(WDM3047). I now have only the correct one(VXD1164 from ESS Tech.) installed. Now all I have to do is put back everything else that I removed & hope it still works. Can I upgrade the CPU in this thing effectively?
Thanks again.
bduff509

[GaryRouth]

Hi again

Not much room for upgrading the cpu: I think 533 was as high as socket 7 could go. I'm not sure you'd notice much difference. And the cpu would cost too much (an Amd XP would be almost the same price and have four times the power - but of course you'd need a motherboard & memory to go with it).

Once the drivers are Ok, the system with extra memory should show a nice performance gain.

Best of luck
. . . Gary