Hi. Ever since I got my new system built, i have a problem. Whenever I play any music or video, whether its in winamp, wmp, qtime, etc., it will randomly stutter. Sometimes it'll play for several minutes fine, then start stuttering for a 1/2 second or so, and can do this up to every 10 seconds or so. EVERYTHING ELSE on the machine runs great. I'm playing high-end video games (call of duty, farcry demo, ut2k4 demo, painkiller demo) beautifully, no hitches or anything. My specs: -amd xp 2500+ proc not OC'd -Epox 8kra2 sysboard w/ via chipset -xp pro w/ ALL updates -sb live value soundcard (yes its old) -2 512 mb stick of ddr 2700 ram (single channel) -thermaltake xaserII case w/ tons o' cooling -radeon 9600xt 128 mb vidcard -40x cd-rw made by sony i think As I said, I have all updates available (sp1, etc.), have installed the via 4-in-1 drivers off via's site (and also used the ones that came w/ winxp). I have had the task mgr. running in the systray to see if the cpu is spiking or anything when it stutters, and it doesn't appear to. Also I don't think the computer itself has a hitch when this happens, just the sound or video that's playing. If anyone has an idea of what this could be I'd really appreciate it. My old system did not do this, and I have some of the parts from it on this machine. The new parts are: ram, proc, board, vidcard Thanks and God bless.

Correction: at least FireBird (web browser) stutters when the sound/video does. I have played games w/ music and haven't noticed it though, but it could as well.

SRY! 1 more thing: I have no viruses and no spyware, system is basically perfect condition aside from this d@mn stuttering :(

Maybe XP has set your IDE drives into PIO mode instead of DMA! Remedy? Enter the device manager by right clicking “my computer” and choosing “properties” and then “hardware”. Double click on the “IDE primary drive” and then “advanced settings”. There you can see the current setting for the master and the slave drives on the primary IDE channel. There you can select transfer mode. If it is set at “PIO only”, then select “DMA if available” instead and reboot! If the computer persists on having only PIO after reboot even though the hard drive is a flashing super-duper ATA133 and transfer mode set to “DMA if available”, then you have to do the following: Remove the primary device in the device manager and reboot! Voilà, now the harddrive should be running in DMA mode. Repeat on the secondary IDE channel if necessary. ========================================= How can I optimize the Windows 2000/XP virtual memory (Pagefile)? http://www.petri.co.il/pagefile_optimization.htm How to Configure Paging Files for Optimization and Recovery in Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314482 HOW TO: Set Performance Options in Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308417 Virtual Memory in Windows XP http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alistair.nichol/articles/xpvm.htm