D630 - Sound Skipping

I received my D630 yesterday, and right out of the box the sound skips intermittently during audio playback. I've tried playing DVDs and mp3s. Most of the skipping seems to be triggered by scrolling down a page (web pages and windows explorer). My system's specs are:

Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition, SP2
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7500 (2.20GHz)
2.0GB, DDR2-667 SDRAM, 1 DIMM
120GB Hard Drive, 9.5MM, 7200RPM
128MB NVIDIA® Quadro NVS 135M™
Intel® 3945 802.11a/g Dual-Band Mini Card
Dell Wireless® 360 Bluetooth Module for Windows XP

Here's how I've attempted to resolve the issue:
Upgraded audio driver
Upgraded BIOS
Upgraded video card driver
Upraded Intel wireless card driver
Disabling wireless
Disabled unnecessary startup services
Set power profile to maximum performance

Does anyone have any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

Go to laptopvideo2go and d/l and install the latest or 2nd latest version of the driver for your OS (make sure to d/l the inf file with it).

 

Good chance its another set of Dell's crappy sound drivers.

The m1330, m1530, inspiron 1420/1520/1720 (and vostro equivalents) all use the same POS sound chip that Dell is incapable of producing a good driver.

I installed ubuntu on my Vostro 1400, and no matter how hard I stresst he system the sound DOES NOT SKIP

 

Dell doesn't make the drivers.

 

I don't think it's the sound card drivers that's causing the issue. I'm using an external Creative USB Sound Card that has its own drivers, and I STILL get skipping.

It seems more likely that it's a video card drivers issue. Or Wifi drivers, maybe.

 

Right its not. For me, i fixed it by changing ahci to ata mode in the bios.

 

but you reformatted + reinstalled windows after doing that, right nizzy?

i'm thinking about doing that, but i'm not prepared to reinstall windows.

i can go into the BIOS and switch to ATA mode - but i hear that ATA yields worse performance than AHCI. something to do w/ transfer speeds and the like.

not sure if i'd be willing to sacrifice performance...

 

Its not any real performance difference. But yes i did reinstall. From what i have heard though, you can boot to the vista disk and run a repair, and it will fix it without having to reinstall vista. I never looked into that route though, because i was planning on reinstalling at the time anyways.

 

well, i'm actually on XP Pro. would that boot disk repair route work for XP Pro too?

 

I'm debating reinstalling XP myself.

And I do believe its some kind of driver issue because my Ubuntu Linux install runs FLAWLESSLY! No skips, hiccups or anything - which I occassionaly get under XP...