Sound Degradation Caused By Security Software?

I'm a long time "lurker" of this site and have found many helpful pointers in regards to my pc security over the years. So thank you. I decided to take the "plunge" and sign up to post after experiencing a strange issue with one of my computers.

Here goes:

I recently downloaded and installed Bullguard Internet Security as a trial to determine if I wanted to purchase the product. As a disclaimer, prior to installing Bullguard, I had Comodo Internet Security installed and honestly I didn't have any issues with it whatsoever, but I wanted to try something that was "rated" higher. (I know that is a relative term, of course.) So I installed Bullguard on my pc and one thing that I noticed was that the scan seemed to be less memory intensive and faster than a scan with Comodo, other than that everything was running silky smooth and I was going to make the purchase once the trial expired.

Here is where my issues came in. Well, I'm somewhat a Youtube junkie and love listening and watching commentary and videos in my free time. One day as I was listening to Youtube I noticed that my sound wasn't quite right, as a matter, of fact it sounded horrible--so much so that I began to think my speakers were in disrepair. I went to other sites with videos and the same thing! I could, however, watch videos, that weren't being streaming from the internet without issues i.e. a home movie. My laptop is less than a year old and I've never had this issue before. I checked to make sure my drivers were up-to-date, checked for malware, etc., anything that I could think of. The only thing that was different on this pc was Bullguard, so I uninstalled it, and my sound returned to normal! It was very odd. I've tried to duplicate the issue, but I have not been able to do so. I installed Webroot's Security Anywhere after seeing the reviews and great sale on it and haven't looked back. But I'm still curious as to the cause and if anyone else has had a similar experience?

Thank you in advance for your response. And I apologize for the lengthy post.

 

You are not alone in the bucket of "strange sound issues caused by strange causes." I am not sure what my issue is.

I cannot update my NVIDIA video card drivers. All of their new releases cause a sound crackling problem anytime anything visually intensive moves on the screen, like Windows Aero.

 

You may be experiencing DPC Latency. You can try DPC Latency Checker to see. There's some really good info on the page in addition to the utility. I've had similar issues before with some antivirus products; I don't remember exactly which ones. Hope this helps.

EDIT: I now recall that the issue was my NIC drivers conflicting with the web scanner of the AV I was using at the time.

 

If DPC Latency Checker reveals any problems, then I recommend running LatencyMon which can reveal exactly which program or driver is causing the latency issues.

 

How to get the cause of high CPU usage by DPC (Deferred Procedure Call) and interrupts?

For Nvidia card owners check this PowerMizer Switch, in my case it helped me to eliminate completely the cracking sounds/aero stuttering issues.

 

So what exactly causes this issue?

My comp definitely does not have CPU/latency issues otherwise. Memory usage and CPU are fine when this happens.

 

It's impossible to know for sure what causes this if you don't run the command-line tool first. XPerf http://youtu.be/vyabPTXHYb8

 

After giving this some more thought, I would suggest checking to see if you have any updated drivers available for your NIC. In my case, I had to downgrade to the version my motherboard manufacturer posted on their website. The differences in DPC latency were very apparent between driver versions which made troubleshooting relatively easy for me.

 

I wish this utility was available for XP.

 

On my laptop Realtek Audio Manager only works if I turn off UAC. As soon as I turn on UAC Realtek can't load.
Anybody else run into this?
Thanks

 

High DPC in the case of security software is typically caused when the security product does too much processing in inbound network traffic. If its scanning network traffic and its too slow, you will start to see DPC issues.

 

Nope. Did you install it with UAC on or off? If with it off you may want to uninstall it then reinstall with UAC on.