SOLVED Video and audio freezing randomly following upgrade to Windows 10

[WillPerth]

Hi Everyone,

I have recently carried out an upgrade from Windows 8.1 Pro to Windows 10 Pro (64x) on an older Dell Inspiron 17r 7720 laptop. Following the upgrade, the laptop is running like a train apart from an occasional and very random issue with my video playback.

When streaming online video (e.g., from Youtube, Web-TV, etc.), the video will occasionally freeze/stutter for about 3 seconds during which the picture freezes and I can hear a 3 second buzzing-like sound when the audio freezes simultaneously. This happens at very random intervals, maybe once every 15 or 30 minutes or so, and I haven't been able to discover any pattern in it. I have searched the internet and this forum for a potential solution, and I have tried multiple things, but so far no joy.

If anyone has any suggestions for what could cause this very random and intermittent video and audio freezing, I would be most grateful. Please find the system's details below:

Windows version: 21H2 (OS Build 19044, 1826)
Processor: Intel Core i7 @ 2.3 Ghz
Memory: 6GB
Graphics: 1. NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M, 2. Intel HD Graphics 4000 (driver updated via Intel Driver Support Assist).
Audio: 1. High Definition Audio Device (Microsoft Driver), 2. Intel Display Audio (Intel Driver).

Thanks in advance,

Will

 

[Clintlgm]

Sounds like an Audio driver conflict or failure. I would find the specific drivers for your sound card rather than the MS Windows generic driver.

 

[WillPerth]

Thank you for your reply and suggestions.

I spent a few hours scrutinizing the Task Manager on my laptop, whilst streaming an online video simultaneously, and noticed that every time that my video and audio froze for 3 seconds, a service called Dell.Instrumentation was using up a lot of my CPU and Power. I then did an online search for this Dell service in relation to the problems I was having an low and behold, there are more Dell users out there with the same problems.

As it turns out, Dell recently released updates for the Dell.Techhub service and their Dell.Instrumentation service and these updates seems to have a bug. What these Dell services SHOULD do is run a test of the computer's fans during the startup of the system. However, what the services ARE DOING is run a test of all the fans in the laptop every 10-15 minutes!!! After I disabled the Dell.Instrumentation service in Device Manager, and set the Dell.Techhub service to 'manual' in the Windows Services Manager, my problems are gone: no more freezing or lagging issues, regardless of how many videos I am streaming at a time. More info on this can be found on the following thread: Alienware 17 r3 randomly freezing for 3 seconds : Alienware.

Hope this information helps other Dell users out there who are having similar issues.

W