DVD Drive on PC crackling/sluggish, what can I do?

[The Lost Chord]

I have a DVD drive on my Dell PC, and whenever I play an album on it it is unlistenable, it just slugs through any song, crackling and static, moving very slow...but I can RIP the album and then it runs perfectly fine.

Now, I am playing games on this drive, and they have crackling audio. Fear and Condemned both have a strange high ptched audio sound. I have tried two different sound cards and speakers and the problem is the same on both, so I am making the wise guess that it is the DVD drive.

Can anyone help explain this? Could it be dust or something? I am going to attempt a clean out of the drive, but It has been doing this for about a year now...

Any help? Anything I can do through the Windows?

 

[Ididmyc600]

Hi

No its time to replace the drive, you have proven it to be faulty with the tests you have done.

Its probably the circuit board that deals with the sound side of the signal thats going faulty, hence the sound fault but no issue reading the drive.

Regards

 

[Fragrant Coit]

Before you do anything drastic, look in Cotrol Panel, System, Device Manager and the {Probably} Secondary IDE Controller Properties. It should be running DMA mode, usually 2.

If it's in PIO, that can cause some dramas, so UNINSTALL the controller, reboot and hopefully it'll revert to DMA.

If it's in DMA and still playing up, it's time for a new drive.

 

[The Lost Chord]

Thanks for all of the help. I have discovered that shutting off digital audio for the sound card has stopped the high pitched strange sound in games! Still faulty with the CDs, but right now I dont need it for that so I am happy !

Thanks!