I've been using this PC for a few years now. In the time I've had it, I've had no problems at all with sound. In the last few days, I've noticed that the sound has begun to skip seemingly randomly.

I noticed the problem initially after installing a new ADSL modem, but I'm not so sure if this is in fact the cause. It could be, but I don't see why it would affect the sound output. I've already discussed the problem here. The only other thing that I can think could be causing the problem is winamp 5.3 which I recently upgraded to. Other than this I can't think what has changed that would cause this problem.

Basically, the sound always skips. It does it increasingly as the system is used. It is a system wide problem, effecting anything that outputs sound, through either DirectSound or waveOut. It does it no matter what the priority of the application outputting sound: normal or realtime. The problem can occur with the windows startup sound, so the problem is caused by something starting before that.
As I mentioned, the frequency of skips is often random, but sometimes is very regular. Sometimes the skips are small, and sometimes they are more noticable, but this could be just that it is more noticable in different output content. A very short sample of sound is repeated once, and then the sound continues. For example, a drum beat may be played twice in fast succession.

It is quite difficult to create a sample of sound to show the problem, but if someone wants to hear the problem I will try.

The sound is from an Integrated Realtek ALC655 AC'97 IC (http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/productsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=23&PFid=30&Level=5&Conn=4&;ProdID=57). I updated to the latest driver earlier today which did not fix the problem.
Motherboard is a gigabyte GA-8PENXP(Rev 1.x) (http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=1643)
Windows XP SP2 has been updated with all patches
DirectX is version 9.0C (dxdiag shows no issues)
No driver issues or IRQ sharing with soundcard
Chipset just upgraded to latest drivers


I've been trying various things over the last few days to try and fix this (system restores, complete winamp uninstallation, modem uninstallation, software updates) and so far, as far as I can tell, none of my attempts have fixed the problem. I'm at a bit of a loss.

Thanks for any help.

Is this a USB modem? That could be the source of the problem; maybe it has some poorly written drivers. Look for new ones from the original manufacturer, not your isp. If it's an ethernet type you can rule it out.

Problem fixed - disabled the old pci adsl modem. Thanks for help. Topic closed.

I had the very same problem once that was caused by bad master/slave jumper settings on the two drives of an IDE chain. Obviously not your problem (since you solved yours . Just posting this here for anyone else who searches for the topic.