I know this is going to sound weird, but just recently, whenever I'm encoding WAV files to FLAC, my net connection drops completely until the encoding has finished. This obviously isn't normal as I've been encoding FLACs on this PC for years now. Anyone know what's happening?

Have you tried encoding to MP3 or any other codec before assuming it's FLAC causing the problem?

I don't think FLAC has anything specific to do with it. It could be related to the fact FLAC uses up a lot of CPU power. Perhaps this is conflicting with your network card and / or modem driver.

I suggest looking for driver upgrades for those devices.

Dying/underpowered PSU in the PC perhaps?

flac is generally less cpu intensive than, say, lame, but the disk i/o will be higher.

bcass, what OS are you running? If it's Windows, check in Device Manager -> IDE/ATAPI Controllers -> Primary [and Secondary] IDE Channel to see whether your hard drive has been downgraded from an Ultra ATA mode to "PIO Only" mode. I've had this happen a couple times for very bizarre reasons, and all sorts of strange things happened as a result of it (jumpy mouse pointer, random clicks and pops in audio playback, etc.).

And it can indicate some hardware problem - a faulty cable, for example. And you should check the PSU, of course.

I'm using Windows 2000 Pro SP4. I checked both my IDE channels, and they are both set to Ultra DMA (although I'm not sure if that would matter anyway as I'm using SATA HDDs). I can use the PC for other things whilst encoding, such as use Firefox and Outlook Express. The machine doesn't chug-along while encoding or anything like that.