Question : Problem: Dell Dimension 3000 choppy sound.

I have a dell dimension 3000, and i'm experiencing choppy sound.  I have a sound chip, not a card.  and if i format the machine, the choppy sound goes away for a while, but then it comes back after a period of time.  It even happens when the pc is first booted (with the windows startup tune).  i called Dell about this twice before my warrenty ran out.  the first time they got me to run an exe file not too sure what it did but it fixed the problem.  the second time they had me do something in the bios, but i forget what that was.  both solutions corrected the problem for a few weeks, but it came back.  the exe file does nothing now.  and i don't remember what they asked me to do with the bios.

Any ideas.  Would an actual sound card help this problem?

Answer : Problem: Dell Dimension 3000 choppy sound.

Your sound issue is almost certainly caused by the PIO mode transfers.   Here's how to reset the modes:

Load RegEdit (Start - Run - Regedit)

Go to the following keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\000x

The last four digits will be 0000, 0001, 0002, 0003, and so on.

Under each key, delete all occurences of the following values:

     MasterIdDataChecksum
     SlaveIdDataChecksum

Note:  Not every key will have these items to delete.

Now reboot your system and the issue should disappear :-)

Note:   This is a harmless registry change ... it simply forces XP to redetect the transfer modes for the IDE channels.