Hard drive feedback heard through headphones and fix ac-97 audio

I could hear my hard drive through my headphones buzzing and making various noises. Quite annoying. Turns out it is feedback not from the hard drive but from the CD-Audio input of the sound mixer. I have XP SP3 with the most recent on-board AC-97 audio codec from Realtek which is more up to date than the one on Asus's website. (Asus makes my motherboard).

• Volume control -> Options -> Properties
• Adjust volume for Playback -> Check CD Player -> OK
• Click Mute under CD Player

That will stop the buzzing and audio feedback gain from the cd audio cable which feeds into the onboard audio mixer. You might also have to do the same thing for Aux In, Line In, etc if you have something in those ports.

The microphone input volume can also cause feedback of a different kind (a steady buzzing). The hard drive feedback I was getting was from the hard drive making noise and it was mostly quiet when the hard drive was not active. Muting the CD audio above did the trick.