Annoying sound glitch

[Endless_]

Hello!

Hopefully some of you Civ-wizards still read the Civ 3-forums from time to time.

This friday I bought a new (well it was manufactured in 2004 but anyhow) computer and installed Civ 3 with conquests right away of course (and installed the 1.22 patch)

Soon I started experiencing a strange and rather annoying sound-problem that I've never come across when playing the game on my two previous computer.

This is what happens:
About 15-20 minutes into the game a fan starts in the comp and goes for about 30 seconds , I gues to cool things down. At the same time the game stutters for a second or so and a kind of short skriii-noise can be heard from the speakers. After that the music in the game never recovers. The music goes stutter stutter and a few times all I get is a spooky ringing sound.
The soundeffects works though.
When turning the music off in preferences I still get that skriiii-noice when the fan starts but then the soundeffects works.
If i exit the game and start again everything works just fine for another 20 minutes.

I'm not very good at the inner-things of a computer and frankly are at a loss. I thought maybe some of you have heard of similiar problems or even better have a handy sullution for me

I haven't tried anything since I got no clue whatsoever what's causing this glitch. According to the computer all hardware is working just fine.

My computer is a Compaq Presario 9040, 3,2 Ghz . 1Gb RAM, graphics: ATI Radeon 9800, sound:Creative soundblaster audigy2 ZS, speakers: Labtec pulse 375 2speakers + subwoofer. Windows XP home with all updates. (The problem occured before I installed SP2 and that didn't help.)

The full system can be viewed here: http://hem-pcorder.atea.se/ms2/mellan.html (in swedish but most computer-terms are in english anyway)

Any help would be much appreciated.

Ps. If my english seems a bit strange in places it's beacuse my native tongue is Swedish. ds.

 

[conquer_dude]

Uhh... Maybe you should try and load another game on and see if it does it. If not, it's with the game. If it does, it's with your speakers. I would take it to a computer place if it continues with other games.

 

[Endless_]

Thanks for the input.

Now I've started trying a few things. Most importantly the problem doesn't seem to originate from the sound. I disabled all sound in the game and shut down the speakers, but that fan-thing still went ballistic about 20 minutes into the game. So whatever that is, if it's for cooling or some other thing it seems to have a secondary effect on the sound.
Without really knowing I get the feeling that that process somehow cuts resources that the soundcard needs. So perhaps the real villain lies within the graphics-card, or somewhere else entirely. Hmmmmm.....

Next I'll try and install a few other games to see if the problem will repeat itself. If it does I'll have to continue my search. For instance I found a BIOS-update for my computer-model, and/or give support a call.
If the problem only shows itself while playing civ I guess I'll just shut the sound off and live with that fan-thing.

 

[conquer_dude]

Well, computers do fan-things sometimes. my laptop does. But that's a laptop...

 

[Endless_]

After reading a suggestion on Soundblaster.com I tried loweringen the hardware acceleration of the graphics-card by one notch.
For one happy playing-hour I thought that solved my problem, but then Whoooom went the fans and skriii went the speakers and then continuing distorted sound in the game. Oh well...

Anyhow this morning I read about the new Civ4-patch and thought that now probably is a good time to join in the fun. So I went out and bought the game.

Hopefully that will run smoothly on my system *a little prayer*

 

[Endless_]

Okidoki now I have installed Civ 4 , Sims 2 and a few other games.
They all work but that godforsaken fan/sound-thing is present in all of them.

The first time it happened in Civ4 the static sound was so loud from the speakers that I actually thought for a second that something exploded.
After the sound-bang the sound returns to normal for a another 20 minutes then fan whoom, sound skriiiiiiiishhhhh.

So obviously it's not the games themselves but something hardware and or driver-related that's causing this.

Since I really hate messing around with drivers and BIOS I still hope that someone can give me an idea or two what to try next. Anyone?

 

[Endless_]

It seems like I'm having a monologue here

Still I thought it could be a good idea to share what seems to be the sollution to my problems with civ3. I have now played for two straight hours without the fan/skriiiiiiish-thing happening. Hopefully that wasn't just a lucky fluke.

What I did was to reluctantly update the BIOS (I was scared to death during the whole process) of my Compaq Presario 9040SE. So if anyone with this computermodel encounters the same problem check this out.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...product=410781&dlc=sv&softwareitem=pv-20167-2

Happy new year to all of you!