View Full Version : World of Warcraft sound problems
thezombiemessia
27-08-09, 22:27
My girlfriend just bought herself a copy of The Battle Chest, and has installed the main game and TBC onto her laptop.
The game itself runs fine, it's running smoothly and everything was going alright. Then, about 2 or 3 minutes into playing the actual game...the sound just disappears.
She's using an Acer 7720Z Laptop with Vista, here's a link to what the laptop is and the full specs:
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/-/653/860/-/3477743/Acer-Aspire-7720Z-Pentium-T2310-1-46GHz-2GB-160GB-17-WXGA+-DVD-SM-Vista-Home-Premium-Laptop-Notebook/Product.html?searchtype=genre
I was wondering if anybody knew of any permanent solutions to this problem, other than restarting the Laptop every time the sound stopped working?
Extra note:
I've been told/heard that the latest patch for the game can have a bit of a problem with Vista, but we encountered no problems whilst installing the game, and as I said...everything else runs perfectly on the laptop.
The sound itself is fine and smooth, but will just disappear for some unknown reason after going fuzzy and distorted for a few moments beforehand.
EDIT:
One of our friends has exactly the same laptop as my girlfriend, and he's been running WoW and TBC on it for the past few weeks.
He hasn't encountered any problems at all, with sound or anything.
Does this help at all? Because we find it a bit odd that 1 laptop can run it perfectly fine, with no problems, and the other laptop (again, exactly the same, both are running on Vista) has issues with the sound?
My girlfriend just bought herself a copy of The Battle Chest, and has installed the main game and TBC onto her laptop.
The game itself runs fine, it's running smoothly and everything was going alright. Then, about 2 or 3 minutes into playing the actual game...the sound just disappears.
She's using an Acer 7720Z Laptop with Vista, here's a link to what the laptop is and the full specs:
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/-/653/860/-/3477743/Acer-Aspire-7720Z-Pentium-T2310-1-46GHz-2GB-160GB-17-WXGA+-DVD-SM-Vista-Home-Premium-Laptop-Notebook/Product.html?searchtype=genre
I was wondering if anybody knew of any permanent solutions to this problem, other than restarting the Laptop every time the sound stopped working?
Extra note:
I've been told/heard that the latest patch for the game can have a bit of a problem with Vista, but we encountered no problems whilst installing the game, and as I said...everything else runs perfectly on the laptop.
The sound itself is fine and smooth, but will just disappear for some unknown reason after going fuzzy and distorted for a few moments beforehand.
Have you tried updating the sound card drivers on the laptop? That looks a pretty hefty spec so I doubt it's the hardware.
Also, has she patched the game all the way up to the latest release? Just checking, as you say above she's installed up to The Burning Crusade.
Sound errors have dropped into and out of WoW from my experience of playing (guilty confession), and some patches take away problems that other patches have bought in. Could well be that a patch between TBC -> Wrath of The Lich King sorts the problem.
I'd probably update sound card / sound drivers, then patch up if the problem isn't sorted. Beyond that, it'd be forum digging time on the WoW tech forums I think.
Good luck!
It happened to me occasionaly but i just went to options, sounds and enabled them again, they disable therselves sometimes
thezombiemessia
27-08-09, 23:23
Have you tried updating the sound card drivers on the laptop? That looks a pretty hefty spec so I doubt it's the hardware.
Also, has she patched the game all the way up to the latest release? Just checking, as you say above she's installed up to The Burning Crusade.
Sound errors have dropped into and out of WoW from my experience of playing (guilty confession), and some patches take away problems that other patches have bought in. Could well be that a patch between TBC -> Wrath of The Lich King sorts the problem.
I'd probably update sound card / sound drivers, then patch up if the problem isn't sorted. Beyond that, it'd be forum digging time on the WoW tech forums I think.
Good luck!
It's all Fully Patched, as we did that on Install.
We've updated the Sound Card Drivers on the laptop.
And we've trawled the WoW Tech Forums, and the only suggestions the Mods give is "Overheating" or "Power issues" which is both untrue, because the laptop isn't even warm, and there are certainly no power issues.
However, the Moderators and Tech Support Staff refuse to admit it could be anything else.
It happened to me occasionaly but i just went to options, sounds and enabled them again, they disable therselves sometimes
All sound settings are enabled, as this was the first thing she went to do when it went away.
We honestly can't see what the problem is, and like I said, we have a friend running the game on the exact same laptop, and it's been running fine for weeks.
*edit as just saw post*.
Sucks :( Perhaps a corrupted install or patch or something.
Could try running the "repair" tool on the WoW installation.
Beyond that, I guess it'd be googling the config of whatever sound card is in the lappy and seeing if it's a known issue.
Very strange!
thezombiemessia
27-08-09, 23:34
Lindsey says thankyou for the suggestions.
She'll try them tomorrow when she has regained hope, as right now she has gone to do something else and try and forget about WoW for the time being.
We'll give you and update on the situation when we can.
So all I could find were these. Hope the external linking is ok within context ;)
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=8376338241&sid=1
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=6178689505&pageNo=2&sid=1
Seems that Acer and WoW have some fun with sound in the current generation.
Is the laptop's Vista 64bit?
A couple of people here reported success having downloaded a new bios from Acer, so that could be a very last port of call. Their issues are more no sound playing outside of WoW and FPS issues however.
A very cool friend of mine works for the online WoW support team, I asked her about this and she said:
"Options>Sound, here there is a list of things under "PLAYBACK" normally you will not have this checked with first starting up. MUSIC will be selected, however the "MUSIC LOOP" needs to be selected.
*If they are running vista, unless they are running under Admin, it may reset to default once they close out of the game. if that is the case. They can right-click the WoW shortcut icon, and select "run as Admin" which will correct the issue for the next time they log on."
So you may want to follow that up.
thezombiemessia
28-08-09, 00:33
So all I could find were these. Hope the external linking is ok within context ;)
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=8376338241&sid=1
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=6178689505&pageNo=2&sid=1
Seems that Acer and WoW have some fun with sound in the current generation.
Is the laptop's Vista 64bit?
A couple of people here reported success having downloaded a new bios from Acer, so that could be a very last port of call. Their issues are more no sound playing outside of WoW and FPS issues however.
Cheers for the links. I've saved them for future reference, as we have a friend coming over tomorrow/today to check it out, see if he can help.
A very cool friend of mine works for the online WoW support team, I asked her about this and she said:
"Options>Sound, here there is a list of things under "PLAYBACK" normally you will not have this checked with first starting up. MUSIC will be selected, however the "MUSIC LOOP" needs to be selected.
*If they are running vista, unless they are running under Admin, it may reset to default once they close out of the game. if that is the case. They can right-click the WoW shortcut icon, and select "run as Admin" which will correct the issue for the next time they log on."
So you may want to follow that up.
Excellent, thanks for the suggestion and the help.
Once we've finished the "repair" sequence, we'll try this and see how it goes.
As with before, we'll keep you updated on the issue.
EDIT:
Right, we tried the "repair" option, and also tried what your friend suggested Dante, but we hit the same problem again.
The sound started to crackle and fuzz and stuff, then there was no sound at all.
We'll see what our friend can do tomorrow, and go from there.
New message from my WoW buddy:
"*ick. i just read his post. I highly don't recommend Repair Utility. It only works if he actually has an Error pop up on his screen. o_O
*Depending on how many expansions are installed, it searches threw all files, that's up to 13GB of info.
*I mean. it doesnt hurt or anything. But it won't work.
*Usually the least amount of time (with a good computer) is about 2-4hrs.
*With only vanillia wow installed is 2-4hrs"
I sure hope you're online TZM.
thezombiemessia
28-08-09, 02:24
Repair thing worked quite quickly, so it's all good. She's right though, it didn't do anything.
Nothing that has been suggested has worked yet. We've even gone so far as to try a full Uninstall and Reinstall.
EDIT:
Well, it's still going on. Sound goes fuzzy and glitchy for a few moments, then completely cuts out. It also screws around with other programs on the laptop, causing music to become corrupted (until the laptop is restarted), and making it impossible to hear anything on the laptop.
But, alas, we are going to bed now...as it is 4am, and we have to be up at some reasonable point today.
Well, my buddy said she'll follow the thread up when possible (hence the last message), but she can't give out this info personally since it may cost her a job, it has to stick to "a friend of a friend" anonymous stuff unfortunately.
If she tells me of anything, I'll post it here, if not, I'll send a PM your way TZM.
thezombiemessia
28-08-09, 12:12
Thanks for the help Dante, much appreciated.
We're still experiencing the problem at the moment, and this appears to be the only place where people are willing to help...
UPDATE:
We just tried toggling the Desktop Composition off, as apparently this is something that Vista has a problem with doing with WoW.
It worked for about 15 minutes, but the sound is now going all fuzzy and crackley.
We've noticed that alot of these problems seem to be prevalent within Acer laptops, as many of these topics all focus around various types of Acer laptop.
At the moment, Blizzard seem to be unwilling to accept that anything is going wrong, and are denying any problem on their end.
UPDATE 2:
This is a good update, at last.
We decided to try something odd.
The fuzzing and crackling started as usual...so we decided to disable the music. The fuzzing and crackling stopped.
Sound Effects and Ambience still work perfectly fine, no fuzzing, no crackling, no problem.
This just shows that there is no problem with the sound card (why would it be fine with 1 type of sound, but not another?) it appears to be a compatability error on Blizzard's behalf.
We'll let you know if anything changes.