What can possibly be affecting the driver for the VIA AC 97 Audio Controller (WDM) on my machine?
A few days ago I woke up the computer to find noise and distortion on the sound. No great problem … I went to Windows Update, installed the latest driver and all was well. But now, every time I turn the computer on, the same problem is back and I have to go through the whole procedure of rolling back and installing the driver from Windows Update again. Weirdly, merely rolling back to the old driver also solves the problem for the session but it returns again on the new boot-up. The problem is evident on the Windows welcome wav so it doesn’t seem to be related to any start-up programs. So I’m frankly baffled … any ideas?
Win XP on Athlon AMD XP 1700+ RAM 384MB
Updated driver: VIA Technologies, Inc 19/08/2003 6.14.1.3880 (Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher)
Rolled back to: Microsoft 01/07/2001 5.1.2535.0 Microsoft Windows Publisher
As stated, either driver works perfectly as long as there is no reboot!