When playing audio on my computer the audio stream stops and starts quite often. This happens whether coming off the Net (radio feeds) or off the hard drive. It doesn’t matter which media player I use it still happens. Reinstalling the audio drivers from the system CD makes no difference. How can I stop these interruptions and have a continuous unbroken audio stream?

There could be several reasons behind this problem. Firstly, you could be using old or incorrect drivers for your sound card. As you obtained the drivers from your system CD, it is probably safe to assume that the drivers are the correct type. However, it may be wise to upgrade to the latest drivers. You can probably find these on the manufacture’s website or via the internet through a search engine. A second reason for the problem, specifically relating to audio streams off the internet, is simply due to internet traffic. When listening to audio over the internet, it is common place to have interruptions due to a slow connection. This is unfortunate but unavoidable. A third reason, specifically relating to playing local audio files, may be that your computer is too slow or is running too many applications in the background to play the audio to the quality which you have specified. Try closing some background applications and reducing the quality of the outputted audio. Finally, there may be a resource conflict between your sound card and another device. To see if this is the cause, go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Control Panel’ and open the ‘System’ control panel. Click the ‘Device Manager’ tab to see if there is an exclamation mark icon next to the sound card device. If so, double-click on the sound card device to gain more information on the conflict. In this situation, you may need to reinstall one of the two conflicting devices in order to resolve the conflict (I would not suggest reinstalling the sound card as you have already done this and it has not resolved the problem).