Vista Audio crackling and hard freeze issue with MacBook Pro Late 2008

[toebs]

If you must run a legacy OS, have you considered XP instead of Vista? XP has far fewer driver issues and far fewer wedges and BSOD experiences.

I have tried XP32, vista 32 and vista 64. All with same result. thanks thou.

 

[Wolfpup]

If you must run a legacy OS, have you considered XP instead of Vista? XP has far fewer driver issues and far fewer wedges and BSOD experiences.

Windows is a "Legacy OS"?

Driver issues in Vista were nailed ages ago, and it shouldn't ever BSOD under normal operation. Only time in recent memory I've had a BSOD in an NT OS was when it turned out I had a dying stick of RAM, and about twice a year I got a BSOD-until the RAM totally died. (Memtest showed a handful of errors, but I sort of ignored them.)

 

[SoybeanStasher]

Disable the Broadcom Wireless in the Device Manager. Should solve the audio pops. An updated driver is around somewhere but I'm not sure which it is.

You don't even have to disable the whole card. Just disable 802.11a in the Advanced Properties tab.

 

[ryannazaretian]

If you must run a legacy OS, have you considered XP instead of Vista? XP has far fewer driver issues and far fewer wedges and BSOD experiences.

Not with my experience with XP... I find Vista way more stable to run. I tried XP and it seems slower than Vista to me. Vista handles the GUI much better than XP. XP can get bogged down on some senseless frozen program, and Vista handles it quite nicely. No, I'm not switching to XP, besides, my university surprisingly requires Vista.

 

[luke1708]

has there been any solution tothis problem? my unibody mac also tends to have the sam problems. from time to time it would lag and would make a crckling noise when playing audio...

 

[valvehead]

has there been any solution tothis problem? my unibody mac also tends to have the sam problems. from time to time it would lag and would make a crckling noise when playing audio...

Sam isn't being very nice, is he? I think it's time for an intervention.

Anyway...

Some good information from Timur in these threads:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/614302/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/629209/

More info here:
http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=11699#p11699
http://www.gearspace.com/board/1961838-post3.html
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Good luck.

 

[Timur]

Thanks for linking to my threads Valvehead!

I put some updates into the original post now including a working link to my batchfile toolkit:

Here's a small toolkit I put together that allows you to conviniently enable/disable Apple's "Boot Camp" tray application (KBDMGR.EXE) via an icon link and/or keyboard shortcut. Optionally it will switch the function of the F-Keys automatically for you depending on whether Boot Camp is loaded or not.

Furthermore it automatically turns Boot Camp's CPU priority to "Idle" and CPU affinity to CPU1 in order to turn down the bug induced DPC Latencies and prevent dropouts with Windows sounds and Media Player playback. Professional Audio users will find that only turning off Boot Camp will allow low audio latency usage. Installation instructions are included in the README.TXT for your convinience.

Boot CampED - Download Page

 

[luke1708]

thanks for your help friends!!! so i must install the broadcom driver and timur's BootcampEd 1.1 zip? and the problem will go away? does it also clear the slight lagging which accompanied the audio crackling?? thanks again!! i was desperate as i needed windows to do programming at uni.

 

[Timur]

You may also need to force your graphic-card drivers into 3D mode, but try that only if you encounter more problems.

Read the following post on how to do it:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/6945145/

 

[luke1708]

timur, i installed your bootcampED zip, but i'm still having problems, could you please give the download link of the boradcom drivers and the nvidia drivers? there are so many of them. i have the base unibody macbook pro

 

[luke1708]

Timur!!!thnks bro!! you are the man!!!! i managed to fix the problem!!!! now i need to install the nvidia software....the crackling noise is minimal!!! i no longer hear it as often and it has disappeared 99%!!!

 

[Timur]

My pleasure!

 

[luke1708]

timur, now im having another problem, the laptop is freezing randomly...what's the problem?it's running cooler but why is it freezing?what do i need to install?

 

[Timur]

If you're running XP then you need to force down the 9600M GT into low-power 3D or 2D via Rivatuner. The NVidia driver has a bug that keeps XP from clocking down the GPU (it always runs at maximum clock and voltage).

If you're on Vista then I cannot say why it's freezing. Did you install the latest NVidia graphic and chipset drivers directly from NVidia? (chipset is nforce 730i/9300/9400)

Did you install the fan-control update from Apple (published in december as far as I remember)?

 

[luke1708]

nope i didnt install these...the freezing has stopped, i don't know whtat caused them. i have the default bootcamp nvidia drivers..i will update them to 185.20 from laptopvideo2go today

 

[Wolfpup]

You can run either Nvidia's notebook or regular drivers with no third party hacks on that system.

 

[valvehead]

Thanks for linking to my threads Valvehead!

That's least I could do to say thanks for doing all that work. I was excited when it worked for me. Finally I can use my MBP for what I bought it for: mobile recording studio. I use Cubase under OS X, but all of my other audio/video apps are Windows-only.