Hello all,

Whenever I playback an audio or video file, regardless of format or player involved, I get skipping and pauses whenever the hard drives are accessed or have anything running in the background. An example is if I start listening to music or watching a video file, I can't do anything else without it interrupting the playback. The video and/or audio stops for a split second and all I hear is a playback of that split second for a second or two and then play resumes. It is completely random as to when it happens but it seems to happen most when the hard drives are accessed. I have tried reinstalling Windows and removed all process that I am able to. I try playing them off both hard drives and that doesn't make a difference. Nothing is working.

I'm pretty sure my specs are fast enough to multitask so if anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them. Thanks!

Soyo Dragon 2 MoBo
Athlon XP 3200+
1 GIG Corsair 3200 DDR
WD Raptor (Windows and proggy installs)
Maxtor 200 GIG SATA (Main storage)
GeForce 5900 8x AGP
Using onboard audio C-Media 97

mmm...

This is a nice problem, I'm glad I don't have... Well the first thing that comes to mind that could be the problem would be your inferior onboard sound card...

But there are a couple of things you can try before buying a SB! live...

1) Run "msconfig" and remove EVERYTHING from startup, restart and test
2) Press ctrl+alt+del and click performance and play your media again
3) If your CPU usage isn't 100% all the time it might be a software problem then...
4) Find updated drivers for your sound card...

Okay it does seem that everything is on par but I'm going to speculate here that sometimes I have found to be the problem with some of my clients...

1) Remove your secondry HD and any CD/DVD drives
2) Put everything on CS (cable select) and your primary HD at the end of the ribbon cable on your primary IDE channel
3) Test

Tell me what you've found...
Good luck...

I must apologize for my stupidity. I do have a SB Live! 5.1 but I thought it was dead. Apparently my case has my mobo slightly tilted as to where I go to screw in my PCI cards and they come up just a hair. I pushed it down and it worked. Everything is much faster all around now. That damn onboard audio must be a serious resource hog. Thanks for the tips though. I'll keep them in mind the next time I have a problem resembling my previous one.

Thanks a lot!