Greetings, I have been having trouble with the sound output on my computer stuttering. It started yesterday after I installed a shareware program I downloaded which must not have installed properly. I've tried cleaning the registry with Norton Utilities and running other diagnostics (disk cleanups, et al.) with no luck. What's funny is that the sound is only affected when running games and not music (mp3's, etc.) I also tried reinstalling Windows ME over its current installation to try and eliminate whatever's wrong, as well as wiping/reinstalling drivers but still no dice. Here are the pertinent specs on my PC. Compaq Presario 7000US Windows ME Build 4.90.3000 256MB RAM Creative Soundblaster PCI128 (WDM) If anyone has any idea what I can do to fix this, I would be most appreciative. Thanks for taking the time to read this. -Fernando

Hmmm, 1st thing is installing winME over itself is generally not a good idea, and neither is having Norton Utilities installed-IMHO. Don't know what might have happened with your shareware program, what program was it (what does it do)? Norton Utilities often (but not always) has the insidious problem of "locking" the windows registry (same goes for Norton Antivirus 2001, btw) preventing the proper writing of device drivers to your hard drive, this may be why reinstalling your soundcard drivers is not having any effect. I would go into msconfig, selective startup, have it so only statemgr, systray, pchealth load on startup. Reboot machine--bring up your windows startup menu (f8 repeatedly) select safe mode (option 3). Once in safe mode Uninstall Norton Utilities and and nav2001 if you have that as well, do a search (files and folders) for *.tmp-select all, delete. Reboot machine, Make sure only explorer and systray are running in background when your back in normal mode. Reinstall SC drivers, reboot, if that doesn't fix problem, check status of soundcard in device manager, also test directsound by start-run, type in dxdiag, if any problems are found reinstall (update) directx. Also check settings in the "sound and mutimedia" icon in your control panel. If none of this works contact your system/SC manufacturer-best of luck. P.S. BTW *Very Important* you MUST get your soundcard drivers from compaq, and not soundblaster.com because your soundcard uses a proprietary driver from Compaq specifically. Cheers

Two more things need mentioning; before you take the checkmark out of "load startup group items" in selective startup, make sure you write down all of the items that were set to load on startup before, so that you can set things exactly as they were if you want. Secondly, I recommend looking into a drive image utility such as Powerquest drive Image to make flawless backups of your c: drive (recommend having a separate partition for c: drive itself otherwise you'll have a huge image file that will take up way too much space--say make it 3-5Gbs with Partition Magic. I personally never use system restore, I have disabled it, and use the my preferred method of re-imaging the drive should something bad happen. Cheers.

Fernando If above doesn't do it..try a System Restore to date prior to problem.. As a side note, sometimes McAfee in systray degrades sound quality... smitty

First of all, thanks to both of you for taking the time to reply. I am quite grateful. I tried all of the above (including disabling the memory-resident programs) and am still having the same problem with the sound skipping. I had also tried using the System Restore feature but it couldn't return the config to a prior date. When that happened (as mentioned above) I made the dumb move of reinstalling Windows over itself and thus erasing all the save-states. I found out later that it didn't work because the Restore lies on both the CD that came with my computer and on a partition on the C drive. First thing I had done when I got this system was pop in my old hard drive as a slave. Apparently that's what screwed me up as far as System Restore goes. I feel like an idiot but hey, you live you learn. Anyways, I ran DXDiag and saved the output file. All the sound and music tests ran successfully. It did say there were problems in the registry file and that I should reinstall DirectX (which I did yesterday when I first started having the problem, before trying any of your suggestions.) Some other stuff in the output file: "Audio Renderers: Creative Sound Blaster PCI128,0x00200000,1,0,QUARTZ.DLL,6.02.11.0608 Default WaveOut Device,0x00200000,1,0,QUARTZ.DLL,6.02.11.0608 DirectSound: Creative Sound Blaster PCI128,0x00200000,1,0,QUARTZ.DLL,6.02.11.0608 Default DirectSound Device,0x00800000,1,0,QUARTZ.DLL,6.02.11.0608" It also said the following keys in the registry are inactive: no keys------ Inactive Sound Entries in Registry no keys----- Card name: Creative Sound Blaster AudioPCI 128 (WDM) Driver: wdmaud.drv Card name: Creative Sound Blaster PCI (WDM) Driver: wdmaud.drv Card name: Creative Sound Blaster PCI (WDM) Driver: wdmaud.drv Card name: Creative Sound Blaster PCI (WDM) Driver: wdmaud.drv" I don't know if any of the above are supposed to be there, but I hope the extra data are useful. If there is any other info I can provide, please let me know. I am hesitant to try anything else until I hear what you have to say. I'd rather like to avoid reinstalling WinME if I can. Thanks alot, again, for your help, patience, and time. Fernando