Sound/video stutter - SP2?

[kelliott]

Hi!

I recently discovered a problem playing games on my machine. I played Neverwinter Nights about a year ago without any problems. But now, at an apparently random interval there is a loud stutter in the sound accompanied by a brief stutter in the video. I tried Doom 3 to see if it was an issue with the game and it did the same thing. I then tried playing an MP3 in Windows Media Player and lone behold it did it there too! Oddly enough, I discovered that if i had the visualizations turned off it went away. And also, if I had them turned on, but my network connection disabled, it also went away. Since I was last playing the game (a year ago) I have reformatted and reinstalled everything, changed my NIC to a wireless dlink DWL-G520 and installed SP2. I tried updating the drivers for my video, sound and network card but it didn't go away. Then I tried uninstalling SP2 and it still hasn't gone away. I noticed though that when i went back into Add/Remove Programs after uninstalling SP2 there were still some hotfixes left in the list. I removed 3/4 but was unable to remove the last - the remove button isn't available. I'm at a loss... I have no idea what else to try.

For the record - I have a P4 with 512 RAM, Soundblaster Live Value, Geforce 3 Video Card and XP Home.

Suggestions would be greatly appreciated!