Audio crackling and popping problems

[Guppy]

Hey guys,

I'm having audio problems on Vista 32bit with onboard sound, all of my other system specs are under "my sytem".

All of a sudden after turning on my computer some device driver installed itself and then my audio was messed up. I have not recently installed anything new hardware or software. Anything I play with audio (movies, mp3s, games) crackles, pops and sort of stutters. I cannot for the life of me figure out or find what driver was installed, I think it had IDE in the name, but the thing is I don't have any IDE devices. Could that just be a coincidence?

I did a system restore to yesterdays configuration but that didn't work. I've reinstalled the audio drivers many times, reinstalled my codecs (all up to date), tried different speakers and headphones and the front panel audio, all with the same problem.

Is there a way to list the devices installed by date/time so I can figure out what was installed? Or is there another way around this problem?

Thanks,
Guppy.

[Terbinator]

I think MS know of this problem, i was reading something about audio pops/crackle on Windows and how their fixing it for 7, ill try and find it again for you.

[Arimus]

I've got a similiar problem with noise on my onboard soundcard - a usb sound module though is fine - which I suspect is down to a poor earth somewhere just too lazy to gut my entire rig and put it back together at the moment (aside from which everything else is working fine, temps are nice and cool so following the if it aint broke don't fix method).

[scaryjim]

Just try rolling back the sound driver in Device Manager (or whatever it's called in Vista!). I once travelled 155miles to diagnose a driver conflict for a client that was fixed by rolling back to the previous driver...

[Guppy]

Thanks for the suggestions guys but as I woke up this morning my audio seems perfectly fine. Again I didn't do anything but it seems to have fixed itself, weird? I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it stays this way.