Ok so I have a Sound Blaster Live 24-bit card and I have an Altec Lansing 5.1 set-up. I updated my sound cards drivers and it got louder but now I hear a sort of staticy noise when I move the mouse around the screen. Its also always there when Im playing World of Warcraft... any advice or uninstall the new driver?

so the noise happened ONLY when you installed a new driver

Yes'sir

wow u totally got me there... i had no idea software can effect hardware like that...

you sure you didnt move any cord or something that would cause a bad ground

Hmm... i suppose anything possible... Ive checked everything plugged into the woofer and nothings loose... should I check behind each speaker? They are all the way in the speaker case, so I really cant get to the connection....

Ok Ive checked every wire and everything tight.... I would blame dirty power but the whole computer is on a conditoner.... Im really lost at how this happened.

put the old driver back on, or just do a driver rollback. Just because the driver is newer, doesn't mean it'* better. Another noise you'lll hear with bad drivers is static during hd activity. In the old days when irq'* were used, seperating things by irq would fix alot of things, but now everything uses irq sharing. You could try moving the mouse to a different usb port (yes, look in device manager, there are multiple usb ports, they aren't all one connection to the same port)

WAIT, before you go messing with drivers and all that jazz...the kids in the room next to me have that car and an extensive sound set up.

What kind of monitor do you have? list the other things around your computer as well.

do you have dual moniors?? LCD?

Ok Ive been messing with the settings since I hung up the phone with you Rob.... First I played the the actual Volume control the program came with and I was able to lower the level of it alot. I then played with the monitors and it also helped. I dont understand why it happened all of a sudden, but I cant hear it anymore thanks guys

I would have suggested that you move your sound card to another PCI slot, prefferably waaaaay at the bottom to eliminate potential noise source but since you took care of it nm.

Another reason why it may have happened is because the volume for the microphone is not set on mute.