Re: Help - my music is chopping
 

I don't see anything out of the ordinary in that list. I'm guessing it's a software setting with your sound card. Poke around and see if a sound buffer got turned off or set really low. Have you trid new sound drivers?

Have you recently installed and updated Norton? Try disabling Norton and see if it still stutters.

Re: Help - my music is chopping
 

i installed the new drivers but in general, i'm just sensing a drop in performance on my computer, and i can't explain it. although this sounds pedestrian, it feels like some of my RAM expired...and now my computer is running at a subpar performance level. my typing right now in this box seems slightly choppy as well, and i can't find any buffer settings but i'll keep looking. when there's a spike in my cpu usage, there's a spike in audio and system performance (naturally). i need to figure out how to eliminate those spikes.

i do truly appreciate the continued help you guys are offering.

Re: Help - my music is chopping
 

Itunes using 20% seems alot, but as you said the music is chopping at start too, so that is not the big problem. Try this: http://www.memtest86.com/ burn the iso and run it (it a self booting test program).

Re: Help - my music is chopping
 

I ran Memtest86 to no avail -- there were no memory errors. Does anybody else have any thoughts?