Solved Windows 10 April 2018 Feature Update audio glitches and stuttering on old x58 system

Thanks Howie and good luck! I think that if there were a club, I wouldn't be allowed in. The only parts of my MT that are still from the original machine are the motherboard and CPU.

You're welcome! Thank YOU!

If that's the criteria for the club, I probably wouldn't be allowed in either, although I have a few more components still in tact:

Case, motherboard, CPU, card reader, DVD+-RW drive, and I think maybe the graphics card.

I've replaced: original memory, original hard disk, original power supply (on at least my 3rd, and yes, the system is behind an APC UPS!), original bundled monitor which was awesome -- SP2309 if I recall, which died and is still on my bench waiting for me to try to replace the internal power supply!

And yet we still suffer with the x58 chipset motherboard, old BIOS, and all of the issues that come along with them. :-/ 

As an update of this ordeal:

• I did not do the uninstall of RST 16.5.1.1030 because the uninstall app froze after giving me all of the warnings. I killed the process after waiting ~10+ minutes of having the progress bar at about 10-15%.
• I attempted to but was unable to install RST v13.6.0.1002 because it complained about not having .NET 4.5. I didn't want to figure that out, so...
• I moved on to install RST 11.7.0.1013 as suggested in the original post here. It worked. My disk activity is no longer constantly pegged at 100% and my audio no longer stutters. FYI I used this continuous tone to do my testing, and will be happy if I never hear it again! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5\_JWMtPVf-A
• Unfortunately, the new v16 RST app and system tray icon is still installed, but I can not launch the app - it says it is the wrong version for the driver.
• LatencyMon says I'm in the clear, but borderline -- and of course storport.sys is the culprit but at significantly less than the prior readings. (Reaches a high of 1115us vs a prior reading of what I think was over 100,000!) DPClat shows me in the yellow zone (~1100us) with the very rare and occasional red bar showing up.
• I want to check which version of the RST driver is installed, but I can no longer access my Device Manager. The Device Manager screen comes up empty, hangs for a while with the spinning mouse icon, then starts to come alive and automatically performs what appears to be a refresh, and it hangs again, until the entire process repeats. Same thing happens if I try to get to the Device Manager from the Computer Management interface.
• Also of note lately my system will sometimes boot showing 16GB RAM and sometimes the full 24GB I actually have installed. When that happens, Task Manager's Memory Performance details slots 1 and 4 being empty. (Those are the ones closest to the CPU.) Reboots don't always seem to help, but what has helped is removing and reseating all of the memory, and more recently, just those in slots 1 and 4. I have not yet cleaned the memory contacts. DeOxit makes a gold electronics contact cleaner I may try, followed by their D5 to protect from corrosion. I'm wondering if I have a failing RAM stick. I have six Corsair 4GB DDR3 XMS-3 units with lifetime warranties. I'll run some memory tests when I find some of that elusive and mythical thing called "free time."

Any suggestions on my remaining issues would be much appreciated -- not to get this thread too off topic, though. Remaining issues are: Device Manager, getting RST v13.6.0.1002 installed instead of v11, and the memory issue.

Wow, that's quite a list. The RAM issue is troubling, but ok, let's focus on the topic.

Honestly, I'd probably go for a clean Windows install of 1803, and work your way up from there rather than going through the time consuming process of troubleshooting. I'm pretty sure just a basic overinstall/refresh would deal with the Device Manager problem, but it won't do anything for the broken leftovers of the newer RST. As a desperate measure, you could try over-installing all of the newer than 11 versions of RST, then uninstalling each one except the working one.

Thanks, again, James. That's all good advice. I've been thinking about moving to SSDs anyway, so that may be a good opportunity. How does one do a fresh install of a specific Windows 10 version like that? I'm unaware of how to get and install it under my existing license. Any tips?

Also, as yet another UPDATE: 

I can confirm that RST v13.6.0.1002 behaves MUCH better than RST v11.7.0.1013. In fact, storport.sys doesn't even register as a culprit on LatencyMon. (now shows up as 0.042ms.)

How did I determine this? 

I'm not sure why, but Device Manager calmed down and opened up okay shortly after my earlier post.

I did a manual upgrade to the driver portion of RST v13.6.0.1002 (iaStorA.sys) by selecting "Browse my computer for driver software" and then "Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer". I suppose that means in a past life of dealing with this issue I had 13.6.0.1002 previously installed.

Point being -- v13.6.0.1002 is MUCH better on my system than 11.7.0.1013 was. YMMV, as they say.

Hope this saga helps others. I think for now I'm going to go with the wise saying "if it works, don't #@$% with it" so I can actually get some work (and other stuff) done.

Curious to know how to get v1803 in case I do decide to move to SSDs, though. And, what SSDs people recommend. Maybe I can get another year or more out of this beast after all?!?!

Please let us know how it went with version 13.x. 

Sunil, see the additional posts/comments I made for (much) more detail;

But, to summarize, 13.x worked MUCH better for me than 11.x -- storport.sys doesn't even register on LatencyMon any more. :-)

Nice.

I think James should try version 13 and share his findings as well. Then we probably can recommend everyone to move to version 13 instead of 11, perhaps.

Now, I know it is off-topic, but I have also seen that the computer does not always detect all the RAM modules.

A little while ago, I had 8 GB x 3 modules and it would detect only 2 of those some time. After spending several months where I would turn off, re-seat the RAM modules and poweron, all 3 modules would come up again, only to disappear after a few days.

Then I thought of filling up the other three vacant RAM slots with my old 1 GB RAM modules, such that I had 24 GB + 3 GB = 27 GB.

Once all the slots were filled up, I never had this disappearing RAM problem again.

Hope that helps.