Losing audio while gaming

First of all, i have to say that my system runs perfectly on Win ME,,
After reformatting my HD to install XP and downloading all of the updates, drivers ect I decide to try play a game.
A few minutes into playing and the sound cuts out. At this point trying to exit the game freezes the system.

So I tries this with another game and the same thing happens.
After a time of playing (Anything from 5mins to 1 hour) the sound stops completely and exiting the game results in a freeze.
Ive D/L all of the files on the MB web site and that didnt help..

Heres my system..

Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
OS Service Pack Service Pack 1
Internet Explorer 6.0.2800.1106 (IE 6.0 SP1)
DirectX 4.09.00.0902 (DirectX 9.0b)

Motherboard:
CPU Type AMD Athlon XP, 2000 MHz (15 x 133) 2400+
Motherboard Name ASRock K7VT4-4X (5 PCI, 1 AGP, 2 DIMM, Audio, LAN)
Motherboard Chipset VIA VT8367 Apollo KT333CF
System Memory 1024 MB (DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type AMI (07/29/03)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)
Communication Port ECP Printer Port (LPT1)

Display:
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (128 MB)
3D Accelerator nVIDIA GeForce FX 5200
Monitor Maxdata Belinea 10 60 30 [19" CRT] (1016439)

Multimedia:
Audio Adapter VIA AC'97 Enhanced Audio Controller

Storage:
IDE Controller VIA Bus Master IDE Controller
Floppy Drive Floppy disk drive
Disk Drive Maxtor 6Y080L0 (80 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133)
Optical Drive _NEC DVD_RW ND-1300A (DVD+RW:4x/2.4x, DVD-RW:4x/2x, DVD-ROM:12x, CD:16x/10x/40x DVD+RW/DVD-RW)
Optical Drive HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR8161B (16x/48x DVD-ROM)
SMART Hard Disks Status OK

Partitions:
C: (NTFS) 78152 MB (72367 MB free)

Input:
Keyboard Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard
Mouse Microsoft PS/2 Port Mouse (IntelliPoint)
Game Controller Microsoft PC-joystick driver

Network:
Network Adapter Realtek RTL8139/810x Family Fast Ethernet NIC (80.3.180.12)

Peripherals:
USB1 Controller VIA VT83C572 PCI-USB Controller
USB1 Controller VIA VT83C572 PCI-USB Controller
USB1 Controller VIA VT83C572 PCI-USB Controller
USB2 Controller VIA USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller
USB Device USB Human Interface Device



eek.. thats a bit messy.. hope its readable..

Does that only happen in games or can you listen to music for hours?

Only when I play a game.

Can you give examples of the games? This problem is kind of weird... Is it crazy commercial games or buggy beta versions or something?

Also run "dxdiag" and go in the sound and music tabs to test DirectSound and DirectMusic (assuming that this is the API they used to program the game.) If all the test work its good... But you might want to disable or lower the harware acceleration in both tabs if the problem was not solved. After that you might wanna try reinstalling the drivers by removing the device and then rebooting and installing it. It might also be corrupted drivers or something.

If none of the above works contact the game developer becuase it may be his fault... (Or your hardware may be faulty.)

ok...

Its Every game that causes this online and offline (but not windows / Internet games)

The Dxdiag tests come up as passed with no probs

Its the 3rd time ive installed the drivers (Ive tried other drivers as well)

Nothing like this happened with the exact same system on Windows ME....
The only thing I can think of is overheating (as it happens only in games and at random times) but only the sound??? and it worked on ME so....

You didn't answer about what games you are playing... try to see if you might not be the only one with that problem.

And also try while completely disabling any sound hardware acceleration for now. (2 sliders in the appropriate dxdiag tabs)

And just another thing, try to set your CPU at normal speeds if removing the acceleration doesn't work. And dude... your system overheats? That's really bad you know. Hopefully this is not what is causing the problem (damage from heat). Get more/better fans or turn down your overclock just a little bit.

Hey I seem to have the same problem with my system.

I have a Pentium 3 2.8GHz system with an MSI 865PEII motherboard with on-board sound.
I am using the latest nVidia driver, and the latest Realtek audio driver along with DirectX9.0c.

I am also finding that when playing games such as Half Life 2, Freelancer, the audio will stop completely. The game carries on as normal. In Half Life 2 I noticed that one time the audio actually came back after a very long time. It is increadibly annoying that I have to shut down the game and then re-start it to get the audio back, especially with Half Life 2 which takes an age to load (I'd love to know what the hell is going on inside the PC when this game is loading - but that's another question!!!).

Anyway this audio problem has me stumped. I have no problem otherwise - with playing music e.t.c., only when playing games.

I'm thinking about buying a creative labs Audigy 2 card - maybe that will solve the problem.

Maybe your south bridge chip over heating (maybe enough to wack audio but rest ok??), make sure air flow accross south bridge chip and maybe add heat sink to south bridge using thermal tape or adhesive. I have my south bridge and all the MOSFETs on motherboard heat-sinked with Arctic Alumina thermal adhesive (I am over-clocking and have a lot of time on my hands).

Many of motherboards also have audio addon chips on motherboard, make sure they/it are clear to get air flow as well.

I realize worked on WinME so seems to be driver/OS related, but I find WinXP makes better use (pushes harder) of new hardware than WinME/9x did.

Shad, I have an Audigy 2 and I have the same problem when playing Half-Life 2, I will lose audio completely after a few minutes of gaming... At first I thought it was related to the sound stuttering problem everyone was having, although my game was not stuttering I was just losing sound...After the patch I thought it would get fixed but the game kept losing sound...

Well I have a P4 2.4GHz, with 512 MB RAM (yes i know i need more ram ) Geforce 5900 Ultra, Audigy 2 ZS, XP PRO.

I was thinking, could this problem be associated with having multiple audio and video codecs installed? If anyone asked me what codecs I have installed in my PC i honestly wouldnt know because of all the movies and anime I teh have...

And another strange thing: As of recently my Winamp will also stop and actually pause by itself. After eliminating Winamp.exe from the running processes, a new instance of Winamp will not play mp3's or any other file for that matter.

What the hell is goin on here?!?!

My problem is somewhat similar...when i play games or listen to music my sounds gets all crackly/stuttering...The wierd thing is that if i pause my music then hit play again...it goes away for a few seconds before it comes back. I dont know if this is a driver problem or if i am overloading my speakers or what....any help would be great