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I seem to have confirmed that I have a prblem playing music on my PC. I frequently get skips or distortions that would seem to indicate a resource problem. However, often if I play a series of songs, or repeat a song, I don't have the issue. Doesn't seem to matter if I have anything else running.
Anyway, today I tried a couple of my mp3s on my laptop -- seemed to have no problem.
Any thoughts on what might cause this?
Plus side
Dell Dimension 2400 2.5 GHz P4
Sound Blaster audio card
1.5 Gb of ram
Minus side (possible overhead)
2 disk drives
USB dvd player (not in use when I have the issue)
several USB flash drives
USB wireless keyboard/mouse
Check your DMA settings for the hard drives and internal CD/DVD drive (if applicable). Sometimes Windoze will disable DMA for the hard drives, and that can make file copying very slow, and often interrupts audio playback too. (That's from Device Manager, IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers, advanced properties of Primary and Secondary IDE controllers.) This one Dell I used persisted in changing the IDE controllers from "DMA if available" to "PIO only", which made for jerky audio playback and slow DVD ripping and burning.
Another thing is to try the Soundblaster card in a different PCI slot.