Stuttering audio in laptop computer

Feb 18, 2005
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I was just issued a new laptop computer at work. The old one was a 1.7 GHz Centrino with 512 MB RAM and Windows 2000. The current one is a 1.5 GHz Centrino with 512 MB RAM and Windows XP (which is the reason for the switch--OS "upgrade").

My old computer ran iTunes 4 absolutely fine. Unlike the computer previous to that one, I never had any stuttering problems with that, despite the fact that it was reading MP3 files from an external hard drive. No matter how many programs I had running, it would play my MP3s perfectly.

The current computer, I'm not so lucky. iTunes 6 starts stuttering (a fraction of a second pause every couple of minutes) as soon as you start it up. Within 4 songs or so, the stuttering becomes so bad (pausing several times per second), that it is unlistenable.

I tried changing the setting in Quicktime preferences to Wave Out, but it didn't help.

So I tried both Windows Media Player and WinAmp. They both stutter. Not as bad as iTunes (they do the fraction of a second pause every couple of minutes, but it doesn't get to the state of doing multiple pauses per second), but still annoying as hell. Can anyone help?