DMA mode is enabled, and I turned sound hardware accelearation down all of the way, but I can't tell if that worked, because whenever I turn the accelaration down, I go back into the Multimedia configuration and it is back up again! Perhaps that would help if it would stay at that setting, but I can't tell. Also, I don't think that upping the virtual memory will help, because I think the way windows has it configured is probably good enough. This problem is reoccuring at different times and is very difficult to tell when it will occur. Sometimes when I start my computer, the windows logon sound is very choppy, other times it plays perfectly fine. Windows Media Player usually plays music fine, unless system resources are down to like 50%, or if I'm installing something substantial. WinAmp is hopeless, its choppy no matter what. Thanks for your suggestions, though. John Lawrence

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I don't know the reason why hardware acceleration won't stick. I assume you tried Apply then OK'd your way out of all screens. I don't really think this is a VM issue but you can in fact reserve a minimum and still let Windows manage it. You type system.ini in the Run box then if you want to reserve, say, 100M of VM then under [386Enh] you add this line: MinPagingFileSize=102400 102400 is kilo bytes and in computers a kilo is 1024 rather than 1000. Note that Windows will still grab more than this setting if it needs it. Interesting maybe but I think too many background tasks running is a much more likely possibility. Good old Ctrl-Alt-Del will give some indication but it is well to remember that anything in the system tray next to the clock is running all the time. If you click around inside these icons there is sometimes a disable and maybe some can be run only when required (using a shortcut to the .exe instead). If there is no disable provided then you can type msconfig in the Run box and untick items in the Startup tab. This website is one of many that will tell you what they all are: STARTUP ITEMS The other possibility (shock horror) is malware/spyware/viruses/trojans so update your AV and run it. Download Ad-Aware and update and run that too. This is a good trojan finder/fixer: A2FREE - JUST DOWN PAGE (ignore report about computing.net cookie, long story but it's harmless). When you've done all that download SpywareBlaster which prevents these nasties taking hold in the first place. Clear out your temporary internet files and defrag, general housekeeping can help a great deal. Derek.W

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... should have said, all programs mentioned are freebies. Derek.W

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Thank you very much for the advice. I have tried everything that all of you have listed except the virtual memory settings. (I'm kind of afraid to do that, because up until now I really haven't gotten any "negative" feedback from windows and have only seen 1 BSOD in the last week.) As for background services, I've disabled most of the stuff except things like volume control and my keyboard program (I think that takes up about 1% of system resources.) Just some advice for any people who have a new HP printer. There are like 5 different background services for those, shoving down the system resources atleast 8% when the computer starts up. I've definately disabled those, and luckily i can still print (but not scan), but I still get choppy sound upon startup and still in WinAmp, but NOT in WMP anymore though! I will probably try the virtual memory settings, but after that I'm not going to do anything else about it... I guess I can live with it. Thanks for everyone's advice! John Lawrence

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What MBoard are you running?

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There's absolutely nothing to be feared by setting a Min in VM using system.ini (although it might not help your problem either). It is often generally beneficial. The problem is knowing how much to reserve. Windows has monitors you can call up, or you can just keep an eye on the size of the file Win386.swp and set it to whatever the highest figure is that you happen to see. If all else fails 100MB is probably not a bad figure if you can spare the HD space. I will stress that "Windows is still managing VM" (and it will say this in My Computer/right click Properties/Performance/Virtual Memory). If you need more it will still be able to get more, which is more than I can say for some of the hair brained Max=Min suggestions on the web, which actually end up restricting the amount of VM available. There is one more tweak with your spec that could help. Again it is in system.ini - you also put this line in 386Enh :- ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 This will save Windows keep preparing VM when it may not actually need it. I am not a tweaks freak - these are the only two I know that appear to have had some benifit. Possibly more to the point is uninstalling WinAmp, rebooting and re-installing it. Derek.W

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