Grrr. A couple of audio problems

So I have recently been having trouble with two audio problems on my computer that seem to have randomly sprung up that I can't seem to get rid of. This is a long post of everything I have done to diagnose the problem, but you can find summary at the bottom.

The first one is that whenever my computer comes out of safe mode, all audio begins to skip/stutter until either the computer reboots or is put into then out of sleep mode again. The second problem is that if that doesn't happen, then instead there will be a click/pop at the beginning or end of any sound (this means when playing music and I start/stop a song, stream files [e.g. youtube] or trigger windows sounds [e.g. hyperlinks].)

What I have tried already:
1) Researched the problem. Some people blamed their graphic drivers.
2) Re-installed current drivers for Audio (Sigma Tel - XP version) and Graphics (Nvidia 175.97 from Dell). Problems persist
3) (This gets complicated):I booted into safe mode and uninstalled both drivers and had windows clear out the driver files. (My computer is now clean of these drivers)
-Rebooted, and ran windows. Device manager shows generic drivers for both audio and video. Sleep mode no longer works, so I cannot test either problem, but none appeard.
-Re-installed graphics driver. Sleep mode no longer triggers audio stuttering, though the audio clicking/popping appeared.
-uninstalled graphics driver and cleaned them off via safe mode. Rebooted into windows. As I was downloading older drivers, I noticed I was getting the audio clicking/popping. I am now confused and head over to notebookreview forums.

My conclusion is that the Audio stuttering is directly related to my audio drivers, and could possibly be a side effect of the clicking/popping (I suspect this since I have not had an issue running them until this other problem occured). Meanwhile, the clicking seems to stem from windows itself,

Summary: Audio keeps having click/pops at the beginning and end of any sound (windows media player, online videos, or windows sounds) and audio will stutter continously after coming out of sleep mode. After running some diagnostics, I have concluded that audio stuttering is directly related to what audio drivers I run, but could be side effect of the clicking/popping. Meanwhile, the clicking/popping seems to stem from windows itself, as the problem occured even when I was using the window generic VGA Adapter. What can I do to fix this?

 

You know, I also have a Dell with a SigmaTel audio chip... but I don't use the SigmaTel drivers at all... I find that Vista's built-in audio drivers handle my sound just fine. I suggest you try uninstalling the sound drivers entirely.

Oh wait, are you on XP? Then I don't know if that'll work... it might, though.

 

The stuttering problem was a result of using the xp drivers (I run those to get stereo mix) and is resolved using the vista drivers.

Also, the clicking problem persists regradless of what drivers I use.

EDIT:
I am running Vista 32 bit Premium w/ SP1