Finally - this thing causes all the problems (M6400)

Well, for me that lagging sound wasn't caused of any bad sound driver. At least I guess so.
My problem was that the process "system" (description is NT Kernel & System) demanded a lot of cpu power after startup. So everything was kind of blocked running smoothly. The system had to be up for a couple minutes (about 30 mins.) - as soon as this process was "finished" everything was fine again.

The new matrix manager solved that problem. After startup the process "system" has max. 2 % cpu. If you have the same problem I would install the matrix manager you get directly from intel (link some posting above). It's from october 24th, whereas the one from dell is dated october 2nd.

 

So far things look o.k., but I haven't spend much time on checking audio output; what is the best way to check for sound issues, in your experience?

 

Running Winamp.

 

Will do; I'll get back to you once I know more. Could be a few days, though, I am going to be travelling

 

Interesting. For me, the default install had horribly stuttering audio on the login screen. The instant I removed the Dell ControlPoint Connection Manager, it went away and was completely clean after that. I had the original Dell Intel Matrix Raid still installed.

Keep in mind, the first boot after installing a new system module like that, windows will have some stuff to do immediately at boot time. I got stuttering on one boot, while going through all the stuff for a fresh install, but rebooted and it was clean afterwards. I'm wondering if the Matrix Raid utilities were just doing the last of their one-time setup steps and glitched the audio a bit.

Really the problem is Vista because the way it handles audio requires the CPU to sit there and baby the sound card 50 times a second instead of once a second like XP and before. Until SP1 came out you had to choose between playing music and having full gigabit throughput.

 

Yeah, exactly this circumstance told me that the default dell matrix storage manager was the problem. After I installed vista and right after the dell manager was installed I had the sound problem - no matter how often I rebooted.

So I did a clean vista install again. Now with the original intel matrix storage manager. No such problems at all.

 

Yeah it really was the Matrix storage driver for you then.

Know what's funny? My first sound stuttering came for me after installing the sound drivers. It went away on the next reboot, but I thought it was funny that Vista was better at running sound without the sound drivers.

Do you have the Dell ControlPoint Connection Manager installed or did you skip that one?

 

Just searched for it. No, it's not installed.

What's the function of that 400MB application?


Update: just got some information about it, I guess it's not that important, right?

 

Just to clarify: I have the original Dell install, including the ControlPoint thing, and have so far not had any stuttering.

 

Update: Now I have absolutely atrocious stuttering right on Vista startup. So far nothing seems to help (new Intel Matrix Manager, sound driver). I am restoring to factory condition now to see if I can figure out what caused this. Things had been fine for a couple of reboots, so I really wonder why I have this issue all of a sudden.

Oh, and the Dell Recovery did not work: I went into Windows Repair, and I thought I was supposed to get an option to restore the Dell Factory Image, but I never saw that option, although I do have a recovery partition on the disk that I haven't touched yet. Anybody know what this is all about? Thankfully I made my own factory image using Acronis...

If this doesn't work, then I am going to install from scratch. First time in many years I hav been forced to do that on a Dell. Not good at all...