The only time I have run into this problem was when device 0 on primary IDE channel (system drive) was mysteriously switched to PIO mode by XP. Not only was the sound scratchy sounding and skipped at times, but everything seemed painfully slow and jumpy. I tried to change it back to DMA mode and rebooted but it stayed in PIO mode. I ended up uninstalling the primary IDE channel, and when I rebooted, the primary IDE channel was reinstalled and it was set to DMA mode and everything was working great again, including sound.
Edit: Upon doing some research on this, I read that XP will switch it to PIO mode after encountering certain errors with the HDD. I can't remember where I found this, but if I find it again I'll post it here. Maybe this is the problem in your case as well.
Last edited by r0ck0; 25/09/03 04:00 PM.