Vostro 1400 sound choppy?

Hi. Im new to the forum, and new to my 1-week-old Vostro 1400. Recently, i cant help but noticing that when i play my mp3s, the mp3 seems to be rather choppy. Im not sure if choppy is the right word to describe this, but there might be some short pauses while im playing the song. Sometimes, it might repeat the previous few seconds, or jump by a few seconds or create some occasional pops. It is as though the computer is lagging. This happens even though i am just surfing the internet with firefox. Is it normal?

Im running windows vista, using the power supply currently. My configuration:
T7300
2GB ram
160GB hard disk
Geforce 8400M GS

I initally thought that it might be fault of windows media player 11, and had installed winamp, but the problem still persist. It seemed like the laptop kinda lagged. Has anybody experienced such a problem? Could this be due to a codec problem? driver problem or hardware problem? or is it just the result of vista using up my resources even though i only have firefox and winamp on?

Please help? Thanks.

 

Try using..foobar2000. Probably one of the lightest players ever. If it's still having that problem...

It'll get rid of one variable.

 

Try this:

1. Go to the "Sound" control panel,

2. Click the first item "Speakers/Headphones", and click the properties button.

3. Go to the "Enhancements" tab and place a check in the "Disable all enhancements"

4. Click apply and the problem is gone.

You'll notice that nothing was checked to begin with. Once the disable option is checked, all the skips and pops go away, no reboot required.


This might help.

 

Has anyone found a fix for this problem?????