Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 8:09 pm
This is the discussion topic for the wiki article: Why do I hear crackles or static from my soundcard?
We really shouldn't use that unsupported red-text 'fix' that I wrote anymore. Upon further investigation, it appears to be a thread safety issue dealing with multicore machines. That 'fix' will effectively shut off all but one of your cores. Not good.
It is possible to just tell Windows to only run Allegiance on one core. After starting Alleg, go into the Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del), into the processes tab, right-click Allegiance.exe, choose Set Affinity. Uncheck all but one box (doesn't matter which) and hit OK. However, you would have to do this every time you run Alleg. The performance loss of forcing Alleg single-core should be negligible.
If you have run that fix, there are 3 ways to get back to a multi-core Windows. First is to try and repeat the process, choosing ACPI Multiprocessor PC, if it's there. If it's not an option, then you would either need to reinstall Windows, or do some boot.ini voodoo, specifically the flags:
/kernel=ntkrnlmp.exe /hal=halmacpi.dll
Make sure those files are actually in your Windows directory first. Otherwise dig around on your CD. Once your system recognizes the multiprocessor PC, the flags should be removed again.
And also suggest playing with the old vs new sound engine setting.