Can some one please give me some ideas?

Issue: Songs cracking (breaks) up when played via itunes, media player or online (least cracking).



The cracking can be really bad at times and occasional at other times. I have checked the windows task manager and the CPU utilization for widows media player, itunes etc is normal (04-11) except when the application is loading (during loading CPU utilization can go up to 90%).


I did not notice any process or application taking up too much of CPU power when the cracking occurs. The only thing that does definitely happen when the songs crack is that the hard disk light flashes vigorously. In fact when the songs crack the most the light almost stays on continuously before beginning to flash intermittently when the quality improves slightly.



I should probably add that this problem existed from the day I bought the PC, but then disappeared for about 5 months after I reinstalled the operating system. Its back again now and I don’t want to reinstall the OS again!!

Some facts about my Laptop :

OS: Win XP 2002, service pack 2
Processor: Intel Pentium M (Centrino) 1.6Mghz
760MB of RAM

Hello Darth ,

Welcome to PCHF.

Is there anything at all that it doesn't crackle on, DVD's or music CD's for example? What is the make and model of the laptop? When the problem started, had any software been installed at the time, as the problem is most likely an application running in the background (even though you may not see it utilizing the CPU much, but may be accessing the disk at the same time). Also, what security software is installed on the PC?

I am sure you are right about an application being the cause of the problem. I guess the question is which one! I know your are right cause even when the music is playing perfectly; if I were to start up internet explorer, the song would crack for a few seconds and then play normally and I see the same vigourous hard disk activity. Should my laptop not be able to cope with running two simple applications simultaneously?

The applications that I suspect are causing the problem are windows desktop search (Indexing) and Azureus (P2P sharing). However the problem does occur when both these applications are not in use (not in the start up either). Sometime I see the hard disk light flashing and the fan comes on but I dont have either application running (unless Azureus is hiding somewhere and running!). Right now when I tested, the DVD ran perfectly using power cinema and there was very little occassional cracking when I played music. The problem is tempremental!!!

There is some application that accesses my hard drive evey now and then slowing down my system momentarily. I need to find that application, I dont see any red flags when I go to task manager and check memory and CPU usage but I do see hard disk activity!!!

My Laptop is a Packard Bell Easy Note L4 series (Bought it in Britain)

The antivirus on the system is Mcafee enterprise edition (Got it from work)

lol, to be honest, it doesn't take much to cause this type of problem, even with the most powerful PC. Sometimes just a fragmented disk. McAfee braught alarm bells ringing in my ear, as a very good peice of software this may be, it does work your system hard in the background. It was only today I was installing a batch of Dell PC's, and frustrated with the fact they have started to include McAfee pre-installed. I must of spent hours waiting removing it off each of them. There are plenty of free alternatives to McAffee, without the need to pay for a yearly subscription. P2P is another (altough I can't really discuss this one in detail due to PCHF Rules).

Other than these two, another was may be to use msconfig (Start, Run, type in msconifg). Click on the Startup tab, and untick all your programmes starting up. Reboot and test. Bring them back one by one until your problem starts again and you will know where you problem lies.

Man, thanks for bothering to reply. Any ideas on the best free antivirus around? Is AVG still free?

free as ever, That's the one I use on my 3 pc's.

Here you go: AVG Free Advisor: Installation files & documentation

EDIT: Marked as answered.