I just reformated my cpu today, and as i was playing cs today, i got a pop up ad in the middle of cs, so as i returned to cs, my sound had like, lag, i would shoot, and about 1.5 seconds later, i would hear the sound. It was really weird, never, ever hapend to me before i reformated. Im even using the same sound card drivers that i was using before (Im almost positive). So if it isnt the sound card drivers, what could it be? Then just now, i purposely went in a server, alt tabed, and then came back to cs and my sound was fine, so i guess it happens every now and then. ANy help would be apreciated thanks. By the way, im using a sound blaster live.

Thats a bug in Half Life it self (or maybe just CS). Have you ever had a pop up come up before your reformat of your cpu (I assume you mean HD or something?)

Anyways I've played CS 1.6 a couple times, and I can tell you for sure they comepletely eliminated any problems with alt tabbing to the destkop. No more sound bugs and no more flashing cursor...

Hmmm....interesting.
When I experienced the delay/echo was when I turned on EAX and A3D in the Configuration menu.....apparently this is a known bug as well. When I alt-tab CS, my sound quits altogether..

This is an known issue of CS, which has now been fixed in the CS1.6 Beta, but as yet 1.6 Final has not been released. The same thing also happens if you press the windows key in game.

I have found this problem multiple times in CS or HL. I have found that if you hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and bring up your task manager then goto the applications tab and select the game....then at the bottom hit Switch To. This will act funny for a bit (I have had to do it multiple times to get it to finally work), but it will bring CS back with sound every once in a while. At least it is something you can try to see if it helps when you do alt-tab out.