Sluggishness, stuttering audio and drivers issue

[wguru]

Running an Acer AOA150 netbook, XPH SP3 and system has become pretty sluggish despite cautious use (very little internet use, regimented Norton AV updates/scans (nearly always clean/occaisionally catches a trojan and cleans them) and about 50% free resources, plus task mgr isn't hititng on anything seriously taxing the CPU.

More annoying now than sluggishness, is the near complete stalling (stuttering) of the Windows Startup wav (the stuttering issue has reappeared on each re-install of the OS (four times in about two yrs) and even though the startup wav stutters at startup, if I simply thereafter 'preview' that wav, it plays fine (so obviously something is dragging the system seriously down especially at startup).

If it means anything and/or is noteable, at shutdowns, no shutdown wav is heard (don't even see a wav for that in Sounds), plus not sure why, but I never hear a Windows log-on or log-off wav (despite that in Sounds, these preview playback fine).

Uninstalling the system's primary audio drivers (RealTek High Definition Audio, v5.10.0.5628) have never resolved the stuttering which begins for no reason other than I think it begins happening when I've uninstalled and re-installed KWorld's PVR once or more times.

As for my use of media players (I never use WMP), the few I do use (GOM and InterVideo WinDVD) they reproduce audio just fine, but lately on this build, my KWorld PVR's TVR playbacks (for large tv capture sessions, those exceeding 4 to 5GB's) are refuse to play, plus during the capture process, I'm seeing the live capturing display is jerky (even after un-ticking it's high quality resolution preview option).

Most likely culprit for at least the stuttering issue, is probably PVR's installs (designed for XP SP2, not SP3 and no firmware availed) and normally the KWorld PVR uninstaller (in the start menu) goes thru and re-installs without a hitch, except this time the supporting USB 2800 drivers refuse to uninstall even in safe mode.

Even re-installing PVR and the problem drivers, still doesn't afford my uninstalling the KWorld 2800 drivers (even tried it before uninstalling PVR).

Pretty irritating that it seems I'm left to this merri-go-round of re-installing the OS, as I've quit running SR because it never resolved the issues with sluggishness and audio stuttering.

I'd repeatedly thought that maybe Norton's AntiVirus was causing/contributing to these issues, but neither turning it 'off' or even uninstalling Norton has helped.

I haven't yet tried uninstalling the other five drivers seen in device mgr, ie; Audio Codecs, Legacy Audio Drivers, Legacy Video Capture Devices, Media Control Devices and Video Codecs, mostly because I'm unsure if they'll automatically re-install and/or if not where I'll find them to reinstall, but I read that maybe uninstalling the Legacy Audio Drivers might help.

I'm certain that the cause for the USB 2800 drivers refusing to uninstallis the missing uninstaller (I think its the 'emunist.exe') and regardless that I've 'over-the-top' installed the KWorld USB 2800 WDM Drivers (which re-affords the uninstaller), the damned drivers still refuse to uninstall.

Replies from anyone also experiencing these specific issues with Acer's, XPH SP3 and KWorld software, KWorld greatly appreciated.

 

[wguru]

self fixed...

Figured out that I simply was forced to search for the emunist.exe's and try the one (s) that seemed applicable (vista x86 was the one) and that seems to have worked even though the pop-ups seemed to be not filling in their upper body text, the first seemed proper despite no text and the cond/last
one was pretty clear that the text was missing ie; that pop-up's text area displayed an exclamation point. But at least now in add-rem progs list, the drivers no longer list. For now I'm attributing the missing pop-up text as caused from the machine's frequently seen and otherwise unexplained sluggishness.

 

[soundguruman]

Unexplained?
You have too many applications running and too small a processor. That is it, and that is ALL.
It will NEVER work as you expect it to.
If you want to run all that stuff, and you expect good quality video, you need a MUCH larger processor, quad core for sure.
The tiny little processor is overloaded so much, it can't run. Face Reality.

You have 50% resources FREE? You NEED 90% FREE!
This little computer is for commuters, on jet planes. It does not do (at all) what you think it should do. Very limited speed, very limited processor memory space.
If you want professional quality, invest in professional hardware.