I run Win2k Pro/SP4 on a 3GHz P4, with an HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold (PCI) sound card with its Digital I/O Extension Board.
I've been experiencing some minor PC performance issues for some time, so decided to try 'refreshing' Win2k. Running the installation CD, it said it didn't recognise the current O/S, so I did an 'upgrade' to Win2k SP4 (i.e. reinstalled the same O/S that was there before).
This didn't appear to fix any of the issues I was having, so I decided to uninstall and reinstall some drivers (some of the System Log errors I've been getting relate to the WinFast TV2000XP tuner card I have in the system, so I thought that was a good candidate to start with).
But on uninstalling the TV card, all hell broke loose! My video reverted to low-res VGA, and several other devices in the system were reported as 'Found hardware'! After a long battle with driver CDs and downloads, I eventually got the system running much as it was before, except for the audio...
Any audio playing from the sound card is accompanied by 'crackle' (in the old vinyl days we would describe this sound as 'prickle', from fine dust in the groves). The crackle increases with instantaneous volume of the audio - when the music is silent, there's no crackle, as the sound level builds up, so does the crackle.
The source of the sound doesn't make any difference - both music files and Windows event sounds suffer from the crackle. The player also makes no difference (I've tried a few different music players), nor does the card output used - analogue and Toslink outputs both contain the crackle. Note that I have made NO physical hardware changes (haven't even opened the box or touched the cables) - it was purely software and driver reinstallations that caused the problem (audio was perfect before all this).
I've downloaded the latest HDA drivers and utilities for the card, have uninstalled then reinstalled the sound-card 'hardware'/drivers, but still the crackle persists. It's driving me crazy, 'cause I don't know what else I can try to get rid of it.
Any help would be MOST appreciated! Daniel
