something seems to be wrong with the audio on my computer. the music quality isnt that great, and whenever i open a different program while music is playing the music ssslllloooowwwsss down and lags a LOT. this drives me crazy. anyway i tried using winamp rather than windows media player because winamp uses less memory when running, but that has not fixed the program. what the hell is going on? i have defragged, searched for viruses, scandisk etc. i *believe* that i have an on-board sound card, rather than a seperate one. in device manager i have this information in the audio section: audio codecs legacy audio drivers legacy video capture devices media control devices soundmax integrated digital audio video codecs any help would be very much appreciated!

Make sure your drivers are up to date. If you do have onboard sound... the mobo may sometimes lag a bit due to trying to comput the sound and programs. If this is a new problem... what new programs have you installed? Update your drivers... (don't use Windows update... the drivers they find suck). TK.

how do i find which drivers to install, and how do I install them?

There are some programs on the net that will scan your computer and tell you what hardware you're running. Then all you have to do is head on over the hardware maker's website. If that won't work for you, try finding the maker of your motherboard and try that site, then you'll need to know what model the mobo is... then track down the specs and see if there's onboard sound... if so download the latest drivers there. If it's not onboard sound, you might be able to read who made the sound card by taking the case cover off the PC. Then just find your speaker outlets... if they're onbaord, follow the above... if the connect to an "extra" card, then try to read any data off the chips or card to see if you can find out who made it (creative, etc) then check out they're website for drivers. Good luck.

You'r never going to get great performance from your on-board sound as it's probably relying on your processor to do most of the work, hence the lag. Trust me, buy a soundcard. They don't cost much and the improvement in sound will be amazing (is it time to get new speakers too?).