Realtek Audio = BSOD/Driver Problems (Vista Ultimate 64)

Hey Guys,

I have a brand new motherboard with all the wonderful trimmings of a high-end gaming platform. I recently bought a full install of Vista Ultimate 64 and noticed some "issues" after the install.

On a random basis, I will get BSOD's (and on other occasions, my PC will just reboot itself out of nowhere.) I noticed that this USUALLY (not always) happens when audio is playing (usually (again, not always) through Winamp/Windows Media Player). The only time my PC ran for 24 hours straight with no issues was when I disabled the audio device completely.

I have tried multiple versions of the Realtek drivers starting with the latest (that was posted on this forum) going back to 1.74 (I think that's the ver. number anyway, I'm not at my PC at the moment.) The most stable driver I've had yet was the oldest I could find - 1.74 - but does not include the Realtek Audio Manager (the newer ones did) and I still have a BSOD every couple hours.

The latest driver allows me to run for almost BSOD-free BUT the audio driver will "die" every half hour or so while in use and so far the only solution I have for when that happens is to reboot. I can tell the driver dies when I hear the last second of audio repeatedly while the PC continues to respond perfectly fine. Winamp/Ventrilo/Media Center will throw device-driver errors until I reboot.

Under Windows XP Pro, the latest Realtek audio drivers worked perfectly on this motherboard and never had BSODs. This leads me to believe it's a driver/Vista issue. I have looked at many many Realtek issues on this forum and could not find anyone who had a problem similar to mine.

Also - Does anyone know how to disable DEP (Data Execution Prevention) completely in Vista 64? This MAY be what's causing the issue but I can't find an Off button anywhere - I can change DEP to work on basic Windows components or on all components except what's listed. (And yes, I tried using wildcards in the exception box.)

When I get home tonight I'm going to try the "Repair" install that Brink mentions frequently. It seems to work for several people and if it doesn't ruin my personal settings then I guess it won't hurt to try. It's very odd because I bought the exact same hardware setup for my father as I have (the only difference beeing he purchases Vista Home Premium 32 bit) and his audio works just fine (after a lot of clean installs.) He does not remember specifically but he's pretty sure he didn't install any audio drivers on top of what Vista already provided - whereas I had issues right out of the gate with my default driver.

Hi Nick,

Welcome to Vista Forums.

I do not know if DEP is the cause or not, but this will show you how to disable or enable it for testing.

DEP - Enable or Disable

Hope it works for you,
Shawn

Hey Brink,

Thanks for the quick reply. At this point I'm desperate and trying to throw the book at the problem. When the BSOD hits, it mentions IRQL_IS_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL. I have a strong suspicion that this entire issue is related to my audio and that if I fix my audio, I fixed the issue at hand.

Thanks a million for the DEP disable tutorial. With all the thoughtfulness put into Vista over XP, I'm surprised that I need to run good 'ol cmd to get what I need - I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I'm going to try repairing my install, disabling the DEP, and slapping on the latest driver (again). Hopefully this shotgun method will do the trick. Audio is a must-have!

Well I ended up re-installing Vista (no big deal). Now my system is more unstable than ever! BSODs every few minutes and all I'm doing is web surfing. After a very painful experience with BSODs, I finally finished downloading the Realtek 1.85 driver you posted recently and so far so good (on the sound front.)

Because of this new rash of BSODs that seemingly happen out of nowhere, I am beginning to suspect the real culprit is Windows Update. Every chance I got I told Windows to update everything, and now that I think about it, every crash happens during an update. The Memory Diagnostic Tool (provided in Vista) says my memory is fine. Right now I'm holding off on installing any more updates and I actually have the time to login and make this post! I hope this is the issue because I'm sure once the big updates are done this will be a minor annoyance at most. I hope this is the root of my problems and that I can get back to enjoying my sound again.

I will give any update where necessary.

Nick,

Make sure that you use drivers from the device's website and not from a Windows Update. Have you updated the BIOS?

Here's the latest update:

Windows Update is definitely causing most (if not all) the BSODs. I *THINK* I've identified one specific update that it crashes on - a security fix for IE7. (I don't use IE7 anyway, but I know I'll have to do something about this later...)

Anyway.. I reinstalled Vista a couple more times hoping Windows Update would stop freaking out and no luck, but now that I excluded that one update out of the list things are running sort of smooth. I will make sure no device drivers make it into my update as well.

Do you think I should run Windows Update before or after my device driver updates?

I also can't rule out that the latest sound driver solves my sound issues. My PC crashed while listening to music and I don't think it was related to Windows Update. I will have to do more research on the issue.

It looks like I'm back at square one on this saga - I can't figure out what is causing my system to be so unstable until I get a solid foundation to test/research with. I'm not sure how I was able to get a stable system on my first Vista instill (I've only had Vista since last Thursday) but it's annoying me to no end that I can't even get Windows back to where it was at before I noticed issues. It seems like reinstalling Vista only gave me more problems.

Thanks for the tip on excluding device drivers in Windows Update.

Nick,

I would install all of your device drivers first, then do Windows Updates. If you think it is a particular Windows Update causing the problem, then this will show you how to hide it so it will not show up in the availability list and get installed by accident.

Windows Update

Shawn

are you by any chance overclocking something?

I'm not really sure. I have CAS 4 4 4 memory but I had to tweak my BIOS to obtain those settings on my memory - that's about it. Remember that everything works fine in XP and I was able to play games (World of Warcraft and Counter-Strike: Source) without any maor issue or complaints in Vista and XP.

Tweak them back and you will not have so many problems...

If you insist on tweking and overclocking do them in very small incrments and make sure you have enough spare volatge from your power supply.

Sure it might of worked fine with XP but that's a different OS and Vista 64 handles memory in different ways.