Whats up?

Ok I had to get a new laptop because the video card on my Dell Inspiron 9400 is giving me problems. So I got a Dell Studio 1737.

It comes with Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit SP1................................Vista to me is like a new hot girlfriend with physiological problems, so I installed Windows XP on it is great.

I had a gig last Thursday and I notice I had some spikes problems with the audio which happen 3 times every hour. I had a third look at all the tweaks I did and still had problems. When I ran DPC Latency Checker, I was surprise to see that I had spikes in the red every 4 seconds.

I did a Google Search and found out that there is a latency problem in all Dell Studio Laptop's since they came out. (WTF). It was not only until September 2009 Dell came out with a new Bios update and some Dell Studio's are not having this problem, but the Dell Studio 1735 & 1737 still do, not as much. (Even the new Dell 17.3 will have this problem)

On the Native-Instruments forums, http://www.native-instruments.com/forum ... hp?t=82401 I read that it all has to do with ACPI.SYS that causes spikes problem.

So here is the info from DJ Quartz Who is a Moderator on the forum

Here is where you can get process explorer, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb896653.aspx

Here is where you get the debugging suite, http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtoo...tallx86.mspx#a

1. Install the debugging suite and reboot.
2. Extract the process explorer application.
3. Launch the DPC checker tool (http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml)
4. Launch Process Explorer
5. Double Click on the System Node in the Process Explorer (Where it says Process, look for "System" and double click on it)
6. Locate the acpi.sys in thread (It was #152 on DJ Quartz's system, it could be different for you, Mine was 100)
7. Click on it so it's highlighted
8. Click suspend, then ok
9. Check DPC latency tool graph to see if the spikes have stopped.

If the spikes have stopped and you're in the 'green' in the DPC latency checker, you should be able to run TS Pro flawlessly at this point (Including Torq and Serato)

After you're doine using TS/TS Pro, go back into the Process Explorer, locate the acpi.sys thread, select it and click resume. Check the DPC latency checker and the spikes should return indicating acpi.sys is running again.

I have done this and can Verify 100% I am not having any more spike problems, even with Wireless on.

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK

Well, so much work to a simple solution!
Just go to hardware and disable "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery" in Battery section.
That's it!

Very True, However........


Disabling "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery" in Battery section did not solve the problem.

What I posted was the work around to solve the problem and took me less than a min to do

May I add, when suspending acpi.sys, you will find that you do not have the ability to use some functions on your laptop such as the eject button, turning on Wireless if you use it and others.

All the info is in the Dell Studio 15/17/XPS & Other DPC Spike Issues Work Around Native-Instruments Thread.

It worked for me. Spikes stoped. I did that on 2 laptops with success. I don't need to have wireless because i have 2 partitions. This one is just for Torq.

Have removed all capitals from titles...people will still notice it written in mixed case!

Sorry Ed, thought I did that before

Which laptops? HP, Toshiba, Asus? Yes it worked on some, but not all. Most Dell Studio's still have spikes when Disabling "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery" in Battery section. Those like yourself who can just turn off ACPI in device manager are the lucky ones

I did it on a Targa Notebook and on my Asus EeePC 1000HE (yes it runs Torq )

thanks for this.

My brother bought an studio xps 1340 a few months ago and it had some bad latency issues. thanks to dell the new bios did somewhat fix them. before every 5 seconds his laptops would get spikes. with the new bios installed, it happens every 15 seconds; its an improvement.

but aside from the spikes and disabling running services it runs flawlessly; no issues what so ever. i dont get any spikes while running torq anymore and this is on vista.

If you plan to buy a laptop beware of this issue.

from the dell forums regarding the issue:

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19279703.aspx

just tried this on a dell vostro 1510. Was getting the intermittent spikes on DPC latency checker.
disabled the battery thing in hardware manager and no more spikes

thanks for the tip

hi!

i am thinking about buying a dell vostro 1320.

does this problem only occure with the internal soundcard or with conective too?

and does anbody know if it happens on the 1320 too?


because i dont want to risk having problems like this with my laptop from the start....

Will this be a solution to the random skipping I am having in external control mode with time coded vinyl? Are the skips caused from spikes?

When i click suspend on acpi.sys it comes up with an error saying 'not found', any ideas?

I've been trying to get torq to play a tune from start to finish at a consistent speed for a month now and it's really starting to p*ss me off, i thought the whole point of torq was so u can play an mp3 just using a vinyl to control it? It doesn't seem to be able to play a tune smoothly which makes tight mixing impossible!!

Suspending the acpi.sys driver will also have a lot of negative effects on your PC and laptop performance. ACPI handles all of the power management and much of the way your CPU talk to the rest of the components on the computer through the BIOS (including USB ports for your Xponents, Connectivs and other MIDI devices)

If disabling ACPI is fixing problems on your Dell laptops, then Dell is being dishonest about having "fixed" the BIOS. Every new BIOS update will contain updated ACPI tables, hopefully they will release updates for you soon that work properly with acpi.sys.

For what it's worth, Windows 7 has kicked the sh*t out of both Windows XP (SP1, 2 and 3) and all of Windows Vista service packs when it comes to audio performance on my el-cheapo HP desktop. It fixed all of my audio crackling problems as well as MIDI "jitter" delays when using my MicroKORG as a controller.

I have a dell studio 1537, I was running vista and just switched to windows 7 (fresh install)...Torq seemed to be running OK kinda laggish on the waveforms and sound quality was, well, kinda crappy to be honest (this was with everything turned on wifi, bluetooth, etc) the only thing I had set was the my power management on high performance. I wanted to see how it would run.

Well I found this thread, opened up DPC and sure enough i saw those red bars every 4us/s... tried turning off the acpi.sys with process explorer and it didn't work and it would not let me suspend the process. There were actually 2 different acpi.sys in my comp. After doing a little more searching I came across "Process Hacker" downloaded it, and it allowed me to suspend the acpi.sys I only suspended 1 of the 2 that were there and it brought everything down to green.

Anyone know the difference between both acpi's? Ill list them tonight when i get home from work.

here's a good article on acpi...

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar02/a ... an0302.asp

also, on any xp machine, starting off with a good clean and trimmed down install works wonders. check out http://www.musicxp.net/dnn/ and http://www.blackviper.com/ for install and optimizations. works wonders on xp machines!!!