So I thought I'd pop in and give an update on the issue I posted about a few posts above just in case maybe it might help someone. After trying all sorts of stuff, my popping issue persisted - until today maybe.
My laptop is a Dell model. It's about 5 years old now and ftmp it's worked fairly reliably. Of course it comes with a raft of crap installed most of which I've long since jettisoned as is my policy with these sorts of things, but one thing I hadn't gotten rid of and in fact had actually used a bit was Dell's SupportAssist software. It's basically a suite of optimization and update software that checks for drivers and whatnot and keeps the system up to date. Of course, I'm always leery of this sort of thing and in the past I've done my own updating manually. However, I've found SupportAssist good because it has found things like BIOS updates that I might not normally look for or find. Also, Dell stuff always uses proprietary chipsets - which is ****** really but whatever - and often generic video and audio drivers won't install. You have to get the drivers from Dell.
Anyway, yesterday I decided to do my occasional run of SupportAssist to see what it turned up, and when I fired it up it informed me the software needed to be updated first so I said "OK." Well, it got about a third of the way through the update process and then I got a nice BSOD. Crap. The system restarted and once it booted up I tried the install again. BSOD again. Reboot. So now I'm wondering what the issue is. I spent yesterday trying various things to figure out why I was getting the Blue Screen and eventually I checked the system maintenance report and it appeared as though every BSOD was preceded by the note "Intel HD Audio stopped working." Now, I always run my laptop through my TV via HDMI for the bigger screen size so I figured maybe the issue was the drivers for my videocard, but they are all proprietary and finding the right drivers is a pain without the supportassist app. I spent several hours messing around while getting BSODs every 15 minutes or so and having to wait for things to reboot...
Well, long story short, in trying repeatedly to get SupportAssist to update properly I discovered that there was several different entries for the software in my programs list. I manually un-installed all of them and the BSODS stopped. A quick google search for "Dell SupportAssist BSOD" turned up a bunch of stuff and it turns out it's sort of a known issue. There's problems with the software and recent Windows updates.
OK, so SupporrtAssist is all cleaned off my system and the BSOD issue is gone. This morning I wondered if it was at all possible that that might have had anything to do with the issue I was having with my sound - the pop I have been getting at a really regular 10 or so minute interval that I referred to up the page here. As I mentioned, it seemed like in the Windows problem report the BSODs were always preceded by the Intel HD Audio crashing. I fired up my headphone rig and cued up a bunch of tracks and sure enough, I listened for a solid 30 minutes with no pops at all. And this pop sound was pretty distinct and hard to miss. It was notable enough that it had basically ruined my listening for the past month or so. About 10 minutes into every listening session I'd get the pop and I'd get pissed off, lol. I'm not sure what mechanism might have been at play but I suspect maybe the SupportAssist software had some low-level polling or something going on at some interval that was interfering with the audio driver somehow and was causing the pop. Who knows?
We'll see if the issue remains gone. If it comes back I'll report again.