Wooshing and scratching sound on iMac

Bassi · Feb 10, 2010

I have an iMac I've been running windows 7 RC on for quite a while. After I installed Bootcamp drivers it worked perfectly.

So I decided to install Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, and I started getting a lot of problems with the sound. I'm not "exactly" sure what sound card I have, but I believe it's realtek. (note what it sais in device manager depends on what driver I have installed so this cannot tell me what exactly my sound card is)

So after trying some different Realtek sound drivers and the normal windows sound drivers I thought to myself this is probably just a problem with the drivers not supporting 64 bit.

So now I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit, installed all the bootcamp drivers for my iMac... They're are not all "up to date" since I get them from my Leopard OSX CD.. So the realtek drivers that comes with my bootcamp is this version:
Realtek High Definition Audio Driver R1.82 - And this does not support windows 7.

So I downloaded the R2.41 which does. (Note I tried several R versions on my 64 bit) Still same problem as before. Wooshing and scattering sound like when you are on a radio with bad reception. The higher I turned the volume up the less the whooshing is. But it's still the. And it's REALLY bad when the sound is just turned down a little.

Here are my system specifications:
iMac Revision 8,1 - Bought November 2008
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 Ghz E8335
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 XT, 256 MB ram
2 GB RAM installed

So I hope anyone can help me solve this problem?

Here is some information I pulled out of the Windows System Information:

Code:

[SIZE="3"]Name	Realtek High Definition Audio
Manufacturer	Realtek
Status	OK
PNP Device ID	HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0885&SUBSYS_106B3C00&REV_1001\4&39D4505F&0&0001
Driver	c:\windows\system32\drivers\rtkvhda.sys (6.0.1.6029, 2,85 MB (2.991.328 bytes), 09-02-2010 17:56)

OS Name	Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Version	6.1.7600 Build 7600
Other OS Description 	Not Available
OS Manufacturer	Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer	Apple Inc.
System Model	iMac8,1
System Type	X86-based PC
Processor	Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E8335  @ 2.66GHz, 2667 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date	Apple Inc. IM81.88Z.00C1.B00.0802091538, 09-02-2008
SMBIOS Version	2.4
Windows Directory	C:\Windows
System Directory	C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device	\Device\HarddiskVolume3
Hardware Abstraction Layer	Version = "6.1.7600.16385"
Installed Physical Memory (RAM)	2,00 GB[/SIZE]

cwa107 · Feb 10, 2010

After you installed the Boot Camp drivers, did you run the Apple Software Update to ensure that you're getting the Windows 7 software package that was released recently? This includes specific drivers for your hardware and Windows 7.

Bassi · Feb 10, 2010

I can't really remember so I just tried it. All it did was update itself to v. 2.1.1
Then I started it again, and no new updates.

cwa107 · Feb 10, 2010

There have been a number of threads on audio issues with Windows 7, and all of them came back to driver issues related to Realtek audio codecs. Apple released support for Windows 7 in Boot Camp 2.x and 3.x, so I'm not sure that using the 3.x versions supplied with Snow Leopard would correct this.

Try this (and it's a shot in the dark) - remove the Boot Camp package altogether from the Control Panel => Programs and Features. Also remove any Realtek driver packages you might have installed. Go back to Device Manager and ensure that there is no driver installed for the sound card. If there is, right-click the device and click uninstall.

Then, reinstall the Boot Camp driver package from the Leopard disc. Run the Apple Software Update and report back.

My thought in making this suggestion is that perhaps the updated driver didn't install because it saw what it thought was a superseding driver already installed.

Bassi · Feb 10, 2010

I just did that.
Went into Programs and Features - Uninstalled Bootcamp Services, unistall Realtek High Definition Aduio Driver.
Went into Device Manager - Uninstalled the realtek sound driver.
Restarted
After the restart Windows 7 automaticly install it's own windows sound driver "High Definition Audio Device" wich ofcourse does not work. So I uninstalled it to let bootcamp install it's own drivers.
So I install bootcamp, and start Apple Software update. It checks .... No new updates.
And this is what shows up in Device manager:

And as stated before this driver does not work. No sound.
So now I go directly into the Bootcamp Folder and start the realtek setup file manually:

Boot Camp\Drivers\RealTekSetup

This installation tries to install the:
Realtek High Definition Audio Driver R1.82
But it stops with the message:
"Faliure under the installation of Realtek High Difinition Audio Driver"

This is logical because R1.82 does not support Windows 7. Only Windows XP.

So I install the newest Realtek Audio driver wich is:
Realtek High Definition Audio Driver R2.41 (NOTE: I also tried two other drivers a couple of numbers before 2.41.. I believe it was 2.38 but can't really remember it)

And badabing badabom the sound works.

But with the wooshing sound wich is really annoying me.
So this was actually my journey up to when I posted my problem here.
I just re-did all of it, with the suggestion you provided, but it didn't work.

I thought of trying the Bootcamp 3.0 software if I can get my hands on it, if you haven't considered another possibility to help me fix this problem?

Bassi · Feb 16, 2010

Anyone?

Bassi · Feb 20, 2010

Fixed the problem myself. I installed R1.81 in Windows Vista combability mode.