howdy,

i have a dell desktop with a sound blaster pci64v sound card. i was running red hat 9 on it. whenever i would try to play mp3s, the computer would eventually make a sound like someone switched the power off and then back on real quick and the screen would go into off mode and the computer would be unresponsive. i would have to reboot each time and it always said that the previous shutdown was not clean. sometimes this would happen as soon as i clicked on the mp3 to play, other times it would take 6 or 7 songs before it would do this.

it didn't matter whether xmms was the only program running or not. so, i thought maybe i had a bug in my version of red hat. so, i installed suse 9. same problem. and, it seems to happen whenever i try to play a sound file of any type that is on the hard drive. again, sometimes immediately, sometimes after 30 mins. the only way i can actually reproduce this problem at will is to load up an mp3 file in either xmms or juk, and then try to adjust the volume through the mixer. if the mp3 is playing while i try to adjust the volume, it is an instant crash.

i checked the irqs for all of my devices and there are no conflicts. i thought maybe it was a problem with my hard drive, so i installed suse on a different hd. i have search here and google, but can't seem to find any answers.

could this be a problem with the sound card? what other possibilities should i rule out?

also, when i pop in a cd, i can play the cd with no problems. the problem seems to be limited to when i try to play sound files that are on the hd.

thanks for any help you can offer !!!

-david

Sounds to me like the sound card is bad. Replace it and see what happens.

cool, i just got a new sound card, so i'll post an update after i install and test it.

thanks for the suggestion.

that seems to have done the trick. maybe this thread will help someone in the future. thanks for your advice!!

-david