Crackling Sound and Stuttering Video

[Walnut399]

Hello. I have been playing SWTOR for several years now and up until recently it has all worked fine, but in the last few days (ever since I became a subscriber) I have been suffering from an extremely annoying crackling noise accompanied by a stuttering video. This is particularly annoying during conversations, when it can be almost impossible to hear what characters are saying.

This only happens in SWTOR and occurs no matter what set of headphones I am wearing (it happens even when I don't have any headphones plugged in). There seems to be some connection to sound FX because when I disable these in 'Preferences' the sound goes away. I have already contacted customer services and, unsurprisingly, received a useless automated response which does not even come close to answering my question (it told me how to start the game up if I was having trouble). I have also tried all other methods I have seen online, including updating my drivers and running the game in compatibility mode. None of these things work. Hopefully someone can help. Thank you.

[EA_Kipling · Accepted solution]

@Walnut399

Can you check whether the same thing happens on the lowest GFX settings?

In the game's Graphics Preferences, ensure you have the following options enabled:
- Graphics Quality Preset = Very Low
- Resolution: 1280 x 720
- Window Mode = Windowed
- Visible Character Limit = Low
- Grass Quality = 0
- Shadow Quality = Off

[proxos666]

@Walnut399

Can you provide a dxdiag per this link  , also monitor the CPU temperature when playing and provide the temp when this issue is occurring.

[Walnut399]

Sorry, don't know what you mean by 'per this link' - it just takes me to a guide on running a repair. Here's the dxdiag you asked for anyway.

[Walnut399]

There does not seem to be a significant change in CPU temp when the issue occurs, though there is a faint correlation with decreasing temperature. It normally occurs with a jump from a temperature of 80 to a temperature of approx. 70. 

[Ahrngrim]

@Walnut399

That was what @proxos666 did ask for and the link should have gone to an explanation, the link is now corrected

[EA_Kipling · Accepted solution]

@Walnut399

Can you check whether the same thing happens on the lowest GFX settings?

In the game's Graphics Preferences, ensure you have the following options enabled:
- Graphics Quality Preset = Very Low
- Resolution: 1280 x 720
- Window Mode = Windowed
- Visible Character Limit = Low
- Grass Quality = 0
- Shadow Quality = Off

[proxos666]

@Walnut399

Sorry must of gotthe link wrong, thanks @Ahrngrim for fixing it

What i can see from the dxdiag is that the video card is below the minimum game requirements, your video card is Intel 3000

Minimum is 

• Intel 4100 Integrated Graphics or better

Now your video driver is dated  Driver Date/Size: 6/1/2015 , you may need to completely uninstall that driver to use this utility to update the driver

Now the dxdiag is also showing corruption in the catalog

+++ WER4 +++:
Fault bucket , type 0
Event Name: WindowsWcpStoreCorruption

Open a command prompt as administrator and type sfc /scannow  and see if this can correct errors.

[Walnut399]

Thank you, this has greatly reduced the problem, I don't know why I didn't think of it in the first place. @proxos666, unfortunately the command prompt fix you told me to do did not work, but as I just said, the problem has been fixed anyway, I assume it was simply caused by the graphics being too much for my hardware as I recently set the graphics to a higher setting. Thank you both.