Elysian Shadows

EDIT: Issue solved, seems the DVD Drive was only part of the issue and was totally unrelated to the CPU spike. As it turns out, this loopback device of which i had never seen before had been causing the Plug n Play process to constantly poll for hardware updates. As soon as i uninstalled it's driver and rebooted my machine the issue has seemed to have disappeared. The DVD drive clicking was a factor of 2 things. 1) The Motor on the drive bay was filled with dust. and 2) The constant polling made it so it had to spin up to report it's existence. Thanks for the help guys, i have been spared of going completely insane and windows isn't the culprit

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Has anyone here ever experienced a problem with their DVD drive making a sort of "clunk" sound about 5-6 times every 10-20 seconds?

It sounds like it's trying to do a read but fails. This happens when there is no disk in the drive and is causing my computer to skip, most noticeably when some form of audio or video is playing. Also i notice the mouse cursor changes to a pointer with a disk.

I thought the drive might be fucked, but i can still get it to read disks and also write to them. It might be Vista, but i checked google and found no solutions so far.

I heard from some people that it was due to a vista update, so i got rid of it, rebooted, and yet, it still happens. I think it might be the power on self test being a douche. But yet again, i am really unsure.

Any help is appreciated, thanks

Specs:

OS: Windows Vista Business x64
DVD Drive: HP HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GH15L

Is this happening ever since you bought the drive, or would it be normal some time ago? It might also be the device's normal working sound, you know?

BugInTheSYS wrote:Is this happening ever since you bought the drive, or would it be normal some time ago? It might also be the device's normal working sound, you know?

I got the drive about 1 year ago. The problem only just started around 24 or so hours ago. And i can't be normal, it's in perfect timing spaced around 10 seconds and makes the whole system pause for about 2 seconds and it has never done anything like this before. Im going to get a replacement drive and see if that fixes the issue, but for now i just took it out, as it is really bloody annoying. Thanks for the reply

Does it still do it while the DVD tray is out ?
Sounds like the little pickup motor that slides the tray in and out.

k1net1k wrote: Does it still do it while the DVD tray is out ?
Sounds like the little pickup motor that slides the tray in and out.

Yep, i fixed it by giving it a good smack. The only problem is that it was only part of my problem... The Disk Drive works great now, no annoying as hell sound. But the stuttering audio/video issues remains.
I'm thinking this is either my sound drivers fault, or vista's fault. However, i have not done anything that could have altered the behavior, at least, i don't think i have.

Im using a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy. I remember i had some troubles at the start due to x64 drivers being unexistant, but the issue was solved with ease. Now im just getting stuttering going on like crazy. It's really enough to annoy the shit out of me, i literally near the point of scratching out my eyeballs. I really goddamn wish it was the DVD Drive completely now.

EDIT: Fuck it, this seems to give me a very good reason to finally say "Go blow yourself vista" and install windows 7. Formatting and reinstalling may be a bitch, but such is life.

can you keep task manager open, and see any weird activity on cpu/ram usage when it happens ? open up all the columns (there are 30 +) and see if there is any pattern. reinstall motherboard and sound drivers
failing that, buy a $10 sound card and see if the problem goes away

k1net1k wrote:can you keep task manager open, and see any weird activity on cpu/ram usage when it happens ? open up all the columns (there are 30 +) and see if there is any pattern. reinstall motherboard and sound drivers
failing that, buy a $10 sound card and see if the problem goes away

Yep, Svchost (DComlaunch) seems to be chewing quite alot of cpu power, and further investigation showed that it is accessing the disk at a rather fast rate. I rolled back and then reinstalled my drivers but the issue still persists, i should probably google what the hell "DComlaunch" is..

This explains that interval of 10 seconds, every time the process fires up, the lag/stutter occurs. Im thinking it's Plug n Play rather than DComlaunch as they are both put under the one svchost. And my device manager window is refreshing the devices every 10 seconds, not sure if that's normal behavior.



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