my computer skips

[Dan]

For some reason the last couple of weeks my computer has started skipping, just like an old cd player. I noticed that ituned would stuter a lot, but the same thing happens to other music players as well as videos. Looking at the processes, when the music lags, the system cpu use jumps up to about 50%. Any way to figure out where exactly the problem lies?

I also have some driver problems I think, perhaps related, perhaps not. Whenever my wireless connection starts downloading fast, like a streaming video, it disconnects itself from the wireless network. And the other thing is that sometimes I will find svc hosts using up 99% of the cpu and I usually have to restart or kill it, which will then break the wireless or the audio. I have tried reinstalling the network drivers but problem still occurs.

 

[Asus]

Not sure about the second part. Like you said, it could be related since it's also media.
Playing different kinds of media will be using different codecs so they are probably not the issue.

Make sure all the cable connections are secure in your PC, especially to the hard drive. Try replacing the Hard drive cable (IDE/SATA). Update chipset drivers. (would include the hard drive controller)
Defrag, run anti-virus and spyware scanners.
What else do you have running in the background or that are tray icons?

My brother recently had an issue where his PC would freeze randomly. His IDE cable wasn't making complete contact with his motherboard.
I had an issue similar to yours with jerky media when being played. I moved my SATA drive to a different port and I think I also replaced the cable and that fixed my issue. Not sure exactly what the issue was but Windows reinstalled the drive as if it were a new one when I moved it to a different port and everything was smooth then. I had multiple SATA drives at the time so I think they developed some kind of conflict maybe with the controller driver or IRQ settings. But that is why I'm thinking there might be an issue with how your PC is accessing the hard drive.