I've never heard of this happening before — I installed a new video card and then uninstalled it recently, when the power supply wasn't man enough to handle it ... and ever since, all the sounds on my machine have had an ECHO effect. Do any of you have any idea what could have caused this? I mean, it's every sound in every application. I have no idea if the card swapping caused it, or if it was just a coincidence, but it's really, really weird. Ideas?
Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
Do you have a soundblaster variant?
Posted by A Rat Named Dog (Member # 699) on :
Yes, my sound card is a SoundBlaster.
Posted by AmkaProblemka (Member # 6495) on :
Have you tried updating or reinstalling your sound card driver?
Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
Just a thought. But have you checked the environmental audio settings? You can add reverb and such with the extra software Creative bundles with its products.
Posted by A Rat Named Dog (Member # 699) on :
You know, that could have been done with the ATI Multimedia Center ... let me check it out ... since I CAN'T UNINSTALL IT after the card has been removed ... [grumble grumble not going to put the stupid card back in just to uninstall the software grumble]
Posted by A Rat Named Dog (Member # 699) on :
Yay! I found a program called "Restore Defaults" under Creative in the Start menu, and that did it!
I wonder why the CRAP this happened, though, in the first place ...
Posted by A Rat Named Dog (Member # 699) on :
Oh, and thanks, by the way!
Posted by AmkaProblemka (Member # 6495) on :
Because programmers are lazy.
Okay, I'll cut them a bit of slack: There are often the strangest interactions between software, and programmers can't possibly know the code for every driver out there. So occassionally bits of code will execute in an unexpected and apparently random manner when something happens that the programmer did not anticipate. When one particular thing happens consistantly, its a bug and you get a patch. And no one but the patch programmer knows why that particular thing happened, but it is some trip of the if/then.
But sometimes I think the electrons are all aligned just wrong or maybe the stars, or something, and then we meet our ghost in the machine.
Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
No prob. I've had similar crap happen before.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
ARND when your power supply wasn't enough to handle your video card what were the symptoms?
Steve has, I think, recently installed a new video card, (he wanted to play Far Cry and needed upgrades to do so) But the computer started spontaneously restarting. It started when he tried to play the game, and now it's doing it even when he's not playing anything, and even in the middle of the night when no one is using it. He's tried uninstalling and re-installing and tweaking all the software he has on the computer and basically concluded it is a hardware problem. He was thinking it was either the motherboard or the power supply but hadn't narrowed it down further. (We don't have spare motherboards or power supplies around where he could test his theory.) I already told him that he could upgrade his system with his end of the month paycheck, but do these symptoms sound like an overloaded power supply rather than the motherboard?
(And no, I don't know the numbers or specs on the powersupply or the motherboard. They are a little old now, but still reasonably fast for most things.)
AJ
[ August 11, 2004, 12:06 PM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
I have a vested interest because, I get his "hand me down" computers and this time he's afraid to reconfigure my system with his old parts since he doesn't know what is wrong with the parts.
AJ
Posted by Puppy (Member # 6721) on :
My symptoms were, every time I played a graphics-intensive game, I would get about 5-10 minutes into it, and then my whole system would freeze. The last image would remain on the screen, the last snippet of sound would replay endlessly (sometimes), and I would get no response from the keyboard. I had to restart from the power switch.
I looked up my card and the problem on troubleshooting websites, and they all returned the same diagnosis — my Radeon 9800Pro has higher power demands than other cards a generation below it (which I noted when plugging in its extra power cable), and this kind of crash is what can result when it overtaxes a power supply that was designed to power a lower-end card.
So I reinstalled the old card, and everything was fine.
Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
so are you planning on getting a new power supply...or sticking with the old card?
Halflife 2 will be out soon...you know you will want a new card then...as opposed to a new Card, then you won't get any time for computer games at all
Sorry bad pun...but it just came to me...and I had to spread the wealth. Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
last time I tried to post to this thread hatrack crashed.
I don't know exactly what card Steve has, but I'm going to mention this to him. I'm sure he checked various websites to see if he could figure out the problem, but every now and then despite his godlike computer knowledge compared to myself, he does miss something.
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