Very lengthy post about possible freezing? issues. MAJOR ISSUE, DESPERATE HELP
 

Hello there!
My name is Cryonica and I've only signed up to this forum because over the last few years of using winamp, I've only recently encountered a problem!

Just a little background first. A few weeks ago my whole computer kept freezing randomly, without a blue screen, yet I'd have to reboot. I also had this problem with my music just 'freezing' as well. Anyway, I got another stick of RAM (totaling 1 gig now) and that solved the comp freezing, but not the music 'freezing'.

So, here I am. Where to start...
Sometimes I'll open winamp and it'll be fine all day! Yet, other days I open winamp and start playing files when all of a sudden a few things will happen;
* Random song will just stop playing half way through
* Song 'X' will be playing and I wish to hear song 'Y', so I double click the song I want to hear and it wont work! Not even the EQ will move!
* Or sometimes it will just stop at the next song in line. Wont play it.

So I tried opening an mp3 in WMP (Windows Media Player). The bar slider works, the time counter clicks over... just no sound!

Its only when I go to shut down my computer, that an error msg comes up, with the song it had stopped on! "Error. Program not responding.... End now!" Hmm, interesting I thought. Maybe, I could just use the task manager or processes manager when it decided just to stop again. So, the next time it happened to do it, I looked at the task manager. It said it was running fine. I decided to end the program anyway and see what it did. I reloaded the program, double clicked a song to play.... Nothing! I'd even tried unintalling and reinstalling... still nothing.

So, tonight I decided to uninstall winamp ver 5.24 *AFTER* it had stopped playing on me. Winamp seemed to uninstall a few things then proceed to tell me, it didnt remove some files. I looked in my program files, tried to delete what was left, but it wouldnt delete one file 'libsndfile.dll'. Obviously this was still running and this is why I get the error msgs that SOMETHING in there isnt responding???

I rebooted my machine, removed the files and downloaded the new version 5.31. Everything was up and running, when I decided to connect to the net (yes, I'm prolly the only person in existance to still be using dialup), open a few blank browser window's and sign in to MSN. As I was doing that, I decided to play a song I had only downloaded the night before. As soon as I loaded a page up on ONE of the browsers and a friend logged into msn, the song stopped playing at 12 seconds!

I was quite irrate and had starting chatting to this friend about it, when approx. 30 seconds *AFTER* it stopped.... it decided to keep going! I'd never thought it would do this, then again, I never let it just sit there to see what it would do. So, finally its going again only to stop once more at 1 minute and 34 seconds. Great! I have a poltergeist in my machine! Then, approx. 5 mintues after it had stopped for the second time, it played for another second, stopping a 1 minute 35 seconds. This is where its been for the last 20 minutes, while writing this post! I'd even tried moving the priority to high in the processes section. Still nothing...


So in conclusion;
* Do you think this is a RAM issue?
* Is this a bug problem with 'libsndfile.dll'?
* Possible confilct with something?
* Does my computer have poltergeist?
* Can anybody help me?!?!?

Thankyou!


** EDIT: So after I posted this and reviewed what I had written, my music started playing once again!?

*** EDIT: Spoke too soon. It seemed fine. So, I decided to open some blank browser window's and it stopped again.

Despite the lengthy post I'm afraid you'll still need to post 'HijackThis' and 'One for Nunz' logs. See http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....d=161361#specs

First thing I'd try is a reinstall of the latest soundcard drivers for your machine.

UJ

Sorry. I did read some of that... obviously not enough.

So here's my HijackThis log file.

And here's my plugin log file!


I hope this helps my problem!

Did you try updating/reinstalling the soundcard drivers, as Ujay suggested?

Also try these DirectSound output tweaks.

I didn't notice anything peculiar in your logs.

Well, I havent tried updating/installing new sound drivers yet, for two reasons;
* Its a 20meg download
* I'm on dialup

And besides that, if I'm *NOT* running winamp my sound appears perfectly fine. The issue only happens *SOMETIMES* when I run winamp. It'll happen on random days.


So I just did a quick check of winamp, to try it out tonight and its doing something really spastic. I'll double click any song, its not playing any sound but its skipping from 1min to 3 mins to 2 mins. And it comes up with an error; (is this something to do with the Nunz plugin I installed?)

Nullsoft disk writer plugin v2.11
File: "c:\whatever file here .wav" already exists. Overwrite?

Why is it saying its a .wav, when its really an .mp3?


Seriously, all these later versions seem to have a lot of glitches in it. Maybe there's too many functions. Seems as though older versions ran a lot better.

Latest version runs great here.

Did you accidently select Nullsoft Disk Writer as output plugin?
Prefs (Ctrl+P) > Plug-ins > Output

If that plugin is selected, all output will be written to disk. You may want to check your hard disk (in C:\) for huge .wav files.

Select DirectSound output instead, and apply the DirectSound output tweaks (see link above).
I hope it helps.

Well ok that was weird.
I didnt TELL it to use that as an output, but yes... it fixed that problem!

Cheers!

Still.... I have my main problem though!
:(

Its poltergeist, I know it.

http://sarge.trybalink.net/Smilies/Sarge/Ghost_anim.gif Booooo

Does your anti-virus software regularly scan various folders/directories? If so is there a exclusion list you can add the Winamp directory to?

Well every time I connect my dialup, my anti virus looks for new definitions and downloads etc.

When I do a scan, it just scans the whole C:/. I dont know if it has an options to exclude winamp.

I have AntiVir

Mmh, not sure, but it does sound like a driver issue...
What version of DirectX are you running? (Start > Run > dxdiag)

Perhaps a DirectX log could give some insight (same screen > Save all information).

I'm not familiar with AntiVir.

Is this the antivirus software you are talking about? There is a link for a manual there.

Here's the DxDiag log. I didnt understand much of anything in there, but I asked it to do the sound tests and I never heard any sounds. (This has been after winamp already stopped playing music on me)

All my window's shutdown sounds play though.

What's the pc make/model?
Go to the pc or motherboard manufacturer's website and download the latest drivers for the onboard Realtek AC97 Audio chip.

code:
-------------

Sound Devices

-------------

            Description: Realtek AC97 Audio

      Sound Test Result: Failure at step 19 (User verification of software): HRESULT = 0x00000000 (error code)

I put together the PC myself, bought all the parts etc.

Once again, I only have a dialup connection (with five hour cut off sessions) and therefore would take me a month of Sunday's to download the new drivers.

So what does this error message mean exactly?

Just did a test on the DirectX (Start > Run > dxdiag) stuff *BEFORE* I ran winamp and had it 'freeze' on me..... and everything works! I've heard sound.

So, why is the sound only coming up with an error *AFTER* I have winamp 'freeze' on me?

I don't know. Imminent hardware failure maybe?

Have you reinstalled the onboard sound drivers yet?
(preferably the latest version from the mobo manufacturer's site).

No!
I keep telling everyone, I cant possibly download 20meg on my dialup connection!

I'll be getting broadband in the next few weeks. We've ordered it, just waiting to be connected and get the details. I'll download it then.

Don't you have a drivers installation CD that came with the motherboard?
Try reinstalling the audio drivers maybe?

Also note that the latest drivers are only 17mb :-D
Though yeah, that'll probably take about an hour on a 56k dialup.

Well thankyou to everyone that commented.
I finally downloaded and installed new drivers and its worked (for the moment at least, anyway!)

I just found it strange that all my sounds were fine until I opened winamp!? Oh well..


Thanks once again!