Weird sound problem with Vista

So, my friend is running this ancient Toshiba Satellite Pro M40 with Vista. It was so old that Vista drivers for the sound card isn't even available on the Toshiba website, but after letting the Device Manager do its thing the OS managed to find the necessary software (some Realtek driver, I think) and all was great.

But now the sound is acting up again - no matter what source of the sound (anything playing on iTunes, VLC, Youtube, etc.) the sound stutters "like crazy" - like someone is pressing play/pause really quickly. But the kicker is, and this is like, insane for me, is that when we use the mouse, grab a window, and move the window around, the sound problems go away. So just to be clear, dragging windows around fixes the stutter, but once the dragging stops, the stutter resumes.

Any ideas? We've tried uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers.

 

Try monitoring CPU usage.

Edit:

Why? - The laptop may start some other process if its "idling".

 

We looked at CPU...but the CPU is being used by iTunes, Youtube or whatever, so there's CPU activity. It's definitely not idle, and there's no way we can conclusively tell if some other processes are being started from observing CPU activity alone. Also, we tried setting different priorities to these programs (that use sound) in Task Manager, but no luck.

The only "fix" so far is to grab a window and move it around, which I've never heard of.

BTW, this is a fresh reformat of Vista. Sound was working fine, until RMClock was installed and subsequently uninstalled.

 

Hmmm - now there you go.

You just said "until RMClock was installed and subsequently unistalled" - did you change any settings?

Is your CPU downclocked? Overclocked...

Details!!

Also: Does this occur in other media playing software?
(You should have at least Windows Media Player to test it out)

 

No downclocking, no underclocking. Literally, RMClock was installed then uninstalled. And it occurs with all media playing software, including Windows Media Player.

You think I should run CCleaner to make sure RMClock is completely uninstalled?

 

You could have a look.

Although I'm not sure it'll help...
It could be anything - a damaged/corrupted file, a changed registry setting, a coincidence...

But at least you have a first clue.

 

System Restore.

 

And then?

In my experience system restores break at least as much or more than they repaire...

 

Tried that =/