Macbook Pro XP/Vista audio stuttering fix
My PC has seen less and less of my gaming activity in recent years. It makes me a little sad, but the current generation of consoles is delivering a more cohesive and simple gaming experience than the PC ever could. The PC still has it’s strong suits: games like RTSs and FPSs that demand the fast and accurate control only a mouse can deliver or the modding communities that have sprouted around hit PC games for quite some time now. These things are still unmatched by consoles. Development is much more accessible to basement programmers as well creating a diverse indie game ecosystem.
As such, you can imagine my frustration when I found that my XP-booting Macbook Pro’s audio was stuttering every 15-30 seconds while booted into Windows. When the stuttering occurs, the action in your game slows for a couple of seconds. It may not sound like much, but four times a minute is a little excessive. Rhythm games like Audiosurf become unplayable; all games become frustrating. I set out to find the root of the problem and squelch it for good.
Some extensive Google searching revealed I was not alone in my issue. Tons of others are having the same problems. I went through pages and pages of potential fixes and nothing worked until I ran across a link to an updated WLAN driver for the Broadcom N Wireless adapter (which I have mirrored for you on my server). I installed that, and I now have no stuttering! I can game in peace and harmony once again.
As a service to all of you, I will mirror the driver that I used in this fix. Here are the steps for the fix that worked on my late 2008 unibody Macbook Pro running Windows XP SP3:
- Download and decompress driver
- Right-click “My Computer” and click “Properties”
- Click the “Hardware” tab
- Click on “Device Manager”
- Expand the “Network Adapters” category in the pane on the right
- Right click the Broadcom and click “Update driver”
- Click “Install from a list or specified location” and click “Next”
- Select “Don’t search” and click “Next”
- Click “Have disk”
- Browse to the location of the files you extracted earlier
- Open the folder for your OS
- Click the “Open” button
Once you have completed the process, you should be gaming in bliss. Keep in mind that this will not work for Macbooks with a Wireless NIC other than a Broadcom N NIC and a specific one of those at that. I’m unsure of the model of the NIC, but I would guess all the current unibody Macbook Pros produced after October 2008 have the same wireless adapter. The driver will also work for Vista according to the user who provided the link. (I would credit him, but I can’t even remember where I found it!) I think the procedure is similar for Vista, but, if anyone would like to send me the steps, I will be glad to post it. Good luck!
this fixed worked for me! thank you so much, ive tried everything but this and its fixed my stuttering and my desync issues from recording, if i wasnt so happy right now i would be jumping up and down in excitement! been trying to get this fixed for months
Didn’t work for Vista on my MacBook. Keeps on telling me that the best driver is already installed (dated 21.03.08 by Broadcomm). Also tried newest Driver from broadcomm website with same result. Still like my MacBook.
Wow. Amazing. It seems that it this has fixed my stuttering audio. This has instantly almost doubled my macbook in value! I installed this update 2 weeks ago and am really happy.
Thanks for sharing this solution!
Oh, i own the MacBook Pro, not unibody, the one with the 8600GT in it. (This might help someone out later on)
TheBat
Wow. Amazing. It seems that it this has fixed my stuttering audio. This has instantly almost doubled my macbook in value! I installed this update 2 weeks ago and am really happy.
Thanks for sharing this solution!
TheBat
Tried installing numerous drivers to resolve this issue. None worked for me in XP.
Found a solution on the Apple Support Discussion involving disabling the ‘a’ band in the driver settings. Seems to resolve the issue permanantly.
I just installed windows 7 and this fix seems to not work in it. Disabling bluetooth really helped, and this driver seems to help a bit but its still pretty bad.
I have avoided booting my XP install for a while due to this issue but I am looking to play a bit of Warhammer again. Hopefully this will fix this issue for me as it is what stopped me playing originally.
Will try it tonight, thanks!
I hope this will fix you and you don’t have to jump through any more hoops. Before finding this fix, I was beginning to think I would just have to live with it. Apple’s support doesn’t seem to know how to fix it based on complaints I read in several forum threads about the problem. Then this magical driver fell into my lap!
holy shit, it looks like this fixed my issue!
I’m running Windows 7 on my unibody MacBook Pro and I was having issues with my sound glitching or making like popping noises and the system acting really sluggish. In games this manifested itself in drops to about 1-5 fps I would estimate or the occasional lock for about 30 seconds though the ingame fps said it was staying at about 40-60fps. While on my desktop it would manifest in the noise and the system seeming to slow down for half a second.
Anyway things seem good now after installing the drivers you linked to (which work fine in Windows 7 btw)
That’s fantastic. I knew the drivers worked for me on XP, and I had a pretty good idea they would work on Vista as well. It’s good to know that this will also fix Windows 7.
Speaking of 7, how are you liking it on the Macbook Pro? Have you also run XP on it so that you might compare them?
I originally tried Vista on this MacBook Pro but the video drivers would cause a crash right after boot. I hated Vista’s interface and all I needed to run was steam for games so the OS didn’t really matter that much so I didn’t even try to fix it and installed XP. Once the Windows 7 Beta came out I got really intrigued by it and since I’d have to be testing it soon for my company I figured why not give it a try.
On boot I got the same BSOD then restart that Vista gave me but I solved the problem by booting into safe mode and installing newer nvidia drivers from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/
Once installed I loved it. I would honestly say that I could use it on a daily basis and not really miss OS-X to much which if you ask any of my friends is a huge deal.
Performance wise Vista was a little slower then XP and I’d say Windows 7 is about the same. It’s not slow at all but, not as snappy as Vista.
Visually it’s great, a lot stolen from the OS-X gui, Dock, Finder sidebar, and a bunch of other things but they needed to do it. Their old taskbar was a square and the dock is a wheel. Sure you could make a less square wheel but why not just take the plunge and steal the wheel. Also, gone are the IE like back buttons with dialog box forward buttons like in Vista and many of the other weird visual quirks. You can tell people really thought this one through.
The best way to sum up Windows 7 is that like OS-X it doesn’t get in your way. It’s an OS that stands in the background, looking pretty but lets you do your work (or in my case play).
Apple is still ahead of Microsoft in the OS arena, but with Windows 7 they are maybe only a year ahead, not the 5 or so years it seemed like with XP & Vista.
That sounds great. I’m really looking forward to trying it myself. I hope MS can turn things around with this iteration of the OS. Based on your experience, it sounds like they have.