IBM Thinkpad 390E sound distorted

[560zlaptop]

I have a IBM Thinkpad 390E 2626-EOU and the sound is all distorted,does any one have one of these laptops,or does any body know how to fix it,I downloaded the drivers for it but it it still distorted,when i reloaded Windows XP it said that the sound card was a ESS 1969 pci audiodrive (WDM) when i play a game the sound is fine but in windows the sound is distorted when i listen to music the sound is a little bit distorted

[John Prophet]

has it always been that way or did it just start?

[560zlaptop]

I got it from EBAY.com when it got here it was like that, the guy said i t worked fine,but when I played music or a sound in windows xp it was distorted

[jookieapc]

I had exactly same problem with my Thinkpad 390E and then I updated the BIOS to the latest version and the sound distortion problem has completely disappeared in Windows 2000 and mp3s play perfectly. My greatest difficulty was that the floppy disk drive hasn't worked since I bought this laptop 2nd hand so my solution was to make a bootable cd. I made about 15 coasters during the exercise.