Dell laptop/ESS Maestro/Windows 2000

  • Thread starter Thread starter AlChuck
  • Start date Start date
AlChuck

AlChuck

Well-known member
Hi all,

I have just been given a new Dell Latitude laptop at work. It has Windows 2000 running and it's got an ESS Maestro sound device on it with WDM drivers. The audio has frequent clicks and also seems to stutter ever so slightly, whether I play a MIDI file, an audio CD, or a DVD. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of adjustments one can make. I suspect there is a lot of background stuff going on and will fiddle with turning processes off and see if I can get it to behave properly. Anyone have any specific advice for this hardware combo?

Thanx!
 
I have that exact setup at work and it's working fine. Go to the Dell site and download the latest 2000 drivers for audio and video. Go here and enter the five letter service tag and it'll give you all the drivers for your machine.
 
Thanks, ola! I'm doing it right now... probably should have tried that before I bothered posting here... I'll let you know how it goes...
 
No go

Well, downloaded and installed all the new drivers, same thing -- click click click.

I'm wondering if it's caused by the damn Full Armor software the company loaded on it. Can't disable it even without a password... urrrgh...
 
Is DMA enabled on the hard drives ? You can mess with that setting in windows 2k. Also bring up task manager and see what processes are running and post them here. Make sure you are not running a virus scanner at the same time as audio activities.

I had one of those lattitudes too. Although I did not do any audio work with it I may be able to help ya.

You might be able to find a bug on the Dell support page for audio on that computer.

Those dells have a setting in the bios that changes the sound card from half duplex to full duplex you might have luck playing with that as well. On my Dell the IR (infraRed) support hosed things up once in a while, If you don't use it turn that off as well.
 
Hey Fela,

I will look at the DMA settings...

I'll post what's running next time I boot it up and get the time to look. Thanks for the offer of help.

Dell only has what to do if you hear no sound at all; no bug reports or knowledge base articles on poor performance at all. I tried ESS Technology but they don't have too much info there, they just make the chip that other manufacturers then integrate into their own audio cards/motherboards/whatevers.

I doubt it's the duplex setting, all I'm trying to do so far is just play from the CD player or Windows Media Player or the InterVideo DVD player...

I'll be back as I try various things...

-AlChuck
 
Maybe check and see if any of your audio devices are sharing IRQs as well. You can see that in the device manager resource settings. Sometimes USB, IRDA or or hard disk controllers, netwrok devices use the same IRQ as a sound card and hose up the works.
 
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