I have a K6-3+ 500MHz & 160MB RAM. Have the latest ver of WinAmp. Everytime I play a song in WinAmp, all these little lines run horizontally across my screen. Songs play fine but screen looks crappy.

I've tried increasing the priority to high w/ no luck.

How can I fix this problem?

ranma_kun001@yahoo.com

Are you using a visualization plug-in such as Nullsoft Tiny Fullscreen ? If so, disable it. Otherwise, post again with more info (what exactly happens, etc).

Hi, Thanks trying to help.

I've got the basic WinAmp 2.73. I don't have any plugins running, no skins, no minibrowser, and have the bare minimum running. Songs play fine but when they play, little horizontal lines start jumping everywhere across my screen. Looks like interference or something. They're everywhere. It stops when I stop the song.

Don't know what else to say. I've used earlier versions of WinAmp before on this same system except it had a slower processor and less ram. Never had problems then.

Odd. Which version of Windows are you using ?

Does your computer have an on-board display adapter?? It sounds like you are drawing resources away from the video card, and with an on-borad card thats sometimes known to happen. If this is not the case, what video card do you have??

Also, your speakers create magnetic fields which might interact with your monitor's electron beam.

If you have large, not PC-specific speakers or your speakers are very close to the monitor, try moving them a bit!


/Krutar

I've been messin w/ it a little more and it seems that the lines only appear when I play .cda files (audio CDs). MP3 files and .wav seem to work fine.

Its not the speakers. I moved them and even tried turning them off. I do have an onboard video chip. I've even tried adjusting the shared video memory from 1MB to 4MB with no success.

By the way, its an SiS 5598 on an older Asus SPV-97 mobo. Yeah, I know its old but I just upgraded my processor to a K6-3+ 500MHz and my RAM to 160MB. Previous versions of WinAmp worked fine with the P-166MMX & 64MB RAM . Too bad I don't still have 'em.

It could be that there is some interference coming from the CDROM. Have you tried a new cable?

I think you're right. I think there is interference coming from the CD-ROM drive. I tried disconnecting the the little wire that goes from the CD-ROM to the sound card (this means I can play but can't hear CDs) and even tried changing the IDE cable. No luck with doing either. Even tried disabling DMA.

I'm pretty sure now that the interference is coming from the CD-ROM but don't know what else I can do to fix it :(

thanks for all the help

Hi,

First if your computer is open, and near the screen, close it ! The metallic box is designed to stop interferences. Try to put the computer as far as possible from the screen.

If nothing changes, to be sure about your CDROM, if it has a play button, turn on your computer with the system disc into the floppy drive, type any text to fill the screen, insert an audio CD, and push play. If it's it that causes the problem, the lines should appear.
If it has no play button, turn on your computer, hold down the "ctrl" key while the "verifying DMI pool data" message is displayed (hold it even before, or you'll miss it!), or the f8 key if you have windows95.
The so called "windows start menu" should pop up (nothing to do with the usual start menu). Select "safe mode" by typing its number. Once started, run the Windows CD Player and play a CD, the lines should appear.

Try then moving the CD ROM as far as possible from the video card (if at all possible), if you have a PCI video card, you can also move it to the farthest PCI slot.

Hope it helps

I don't think it is the CD-ROM anymore. Tried a few different things.

1. Pulled all the expansion cards and made sure they were in well.
2. Performed a clean install of Windows 98 and WinAmp.

The interference tamed down. Still see some lines jumping around, they're just tinier now. Not as noticeable

Using Windows 98's default CD player causes no interference. Sonique and UltraPlayer show the same interference that WinAmp does.

3. Tried moving the sound card to different slots. Playing a CD still caused interference.
4. I removed the sound card and played a CD w/ WinAmp. No Interference!

ANY IDEAS ON WHAT TO DO?

Try reinstalling your soundcard (or get a new one ;) )

horizontal lines
 

Regarding your horizontal lines. I have the same problem. I have the same chipset and motherboard you have. The problem started only when I installed Winamp (sorry Winamp guys). When I got my new creative labs sound card it had some CD player that came with the bundled software. I found out later (from only one source) that it had some 'spyware' installed called newsupdate. Sounded like some X-files conspiracy but I later concluded it is just one of these things that monitors how you use the software and sends feedback to the manufacturer. This website explained how to uninstall the newsupdate thing but recommended taking the whole program right off and installing Winamp ("you'll thank me later"). I did just that, installed Winamp and that is when the little horizontal lines began to appear. Only when playing a CD. Did you ever solve your problem? I recommend trying a different CD player (sorry again).

Bring a cell phone near the screen, and call. Hirizontal lines will appear, caused by the phone emitting radio waves. Do your lines look the same?

Guys, would you mind telling me what size monitors you all are using? The bigger the monitor, the more prone it is to electromagnetic interference. If possible, try moving the monitor as far away from the computer and the speakers as you possibly can, and see do you see a difference. It's also possible that you might have to supress some of the signalsfrom the soundcard to the speakers. You can build a simple circuit to do his. However I'd recommend this only if everything else fails.