static / slight clicking from speakers and headphones

[IdeaDirect]

I don't usually use my speakers as the sound is awful. However, I'm going on an International trip and wanted to bring some movies.

I have a T60p 2007 and there is a clicking crackling sound when I listen to anything.

I've searched the forums and can't find a solution. One suggestion was to disable the Infrared reader which I did. Didn't help.

I did notice that the static coincides to the hard drive usage and matches the hard drive light. As that light flickers on and off, the static matches it exactly.

The static is present with both the laptop speakers and headphones.

Can anyone help?

[IdeaDirect]

Turns out Windows has a setting for changing a hard drive from DMA to PIO after 6 read failures. This can happen with a scratched CD or something. This drastically slows down hard drive tasks and has a very high CPU usage.

I was able to switch it back to DMA and now the scratching/static noise is gone. Also, large file transfer speed is up tons. Around 10x faster.

I'm a happy camper now. On my T60p I could only go to DMA5.
Here is a link that got me started:
http://neodon.blogspot.com/2006/07/litt ... drive.html

The instructions were not clear enough though and I had to combine with these instructions:
http://winhlp.com/WxDMA.htm
Then scroll down to re-enable DMA using the registry editor.

For those having slow file transfers, you might want to check to see if your settings have reverted to PIO.