System Graphics Crashes

[hamd01]

OS: Windows 7 (32bit)
System CPU: Pheno II x3 720 3.2Ghz
Memory: 4Gb
Graphics: ATI HD 4830

I'm banging my head against the wall with a problem guys and am looking for some advice.

I've recently got back into gaming and I'm having lots of crashes whilst playing...usually after around 30 minutes or so. However I also experience the exact same issue when using skype to video chat with my Microsoft lifecam.

What happens is that I suddenly got an horredous noise from the speakers and loose all audio from the game. The screen pretty much locks but the PC is not totally locked, I can end task. If I end task and go back to windows, my display has lots of colours all over the place which shouldnt be there. I can usually just about see the Windows Button to reboot the PC gracefully. After a reboot everything returns to normal.

I've tried disabling my life cam.

I've tried fully Windows updating

I've uninstalled and reinstalled my graphics drivers

I've updated graphics drivers to the latest version via the ATI site (October drivers)

But still the problem persists.

The only thing I have been able to find is this in the event log around the time of the problem;

----------------------------------------------
Faulting application name: AUDIODG.EXE, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bcb44
Faulting module name: msvcrt.dll, version: 7.0.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bda6f
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00009b60
Faulting process id: 0x4e4
Faulting application start time: 0x01cb7846165c3457
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\system32\AUDIODG.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\msvcrt.dll
Report Id: e8cb9a60-e43c-11df-a344-000475fbcc37
-------------------------------------------


I don't expect anyone to have magic answer....but what would you do next to get to the bottom of this?

Many thanks
David.

[GoNz0]

thats a driver file for the soundcard, i would check to see if you can get an updated soundcard driver.

[peterb]

Gonz0 is mainly right - audioDG.exe is a Windows host audio engine, that does a lot of the audio processing for windows, so as such it is sound card agnostic, except that it will interact with whatever sound card you have via the soundcard drivers. It was first introduced with VISTA.

It has a reputation for high CPU useage - which is what you are experiencing.

As it interacts with the sound card drivers, it would do no harm to ensure you have the latest version of the driver for windows 7. You should also ensure that you version of Win7 is fully up to date in case there has been another release of audiodg.

A google search just using the term audiodg.exe brings up several items - this is not an uncommon problem. OPne solution suggested is to use the native Windows driver for the card, rather than the mfrs - if they are available they should be downloaded automatically as part of the update process.