[Cyanide Lollipop]

Alright, this has been happening ever since I downloaded the new iTunes but it's been happening with YouTube and such too.

Every so often the sound skips, it's at its worst when I first start up my computer but once I've been on for a bit it's less frequent but still happens enough to be frustrating. I think that the memory usage spikes when it happens too, but I'm not really sure how to confirm that 100%.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 running Windows Vista 64-bit and 4 gigs of RAM (which is why the memory spikes seem odd, because it's been fine til the last few weeks). If there's any other info that will help I can try to provide it.

All Google has turned up is people who recently changed hardware so that's been pretty useless. The only thing I found to try was updating the audio drivers, which didn't help.

[Yokuutsu]

Get Windows 7.

It could be the sound card. You need to open the task manager and watch it. If you use Firefox or google chrome, it could be eating one gig or more of RAM. So check that. Firefox, I can't help you with if it's eating it. Google Chrome? I can.

[Espy]

Youtube and iTunes kill my CPU. It's up quite frequently in the 90's. I'd say it's lag because of it being more frequent when you first start up, but I'm not sure...if it only started a bit ago.

Depending on what browser you use, it could be eating your CPU.

[Cyanide Lollipop]

Would Windows 7 help for sure? I've wanted it since it came out but I've just been waiting til I get a new desktop because I'm a bit hesitant to install an operating system on a computer that already has one, so..

I think next time I first start up and it's skipping a lot, I'll take a look at the task manager, I've tried before but I didn't watch long enough to see it I guess.

I have both Firefox and Chrome, but Firefox is my main browser. It was doing it back when I was using Chrome, but I could switch back to it. I know they both use a ton of RAM. I've had some "holy hell!" moments looking at task manager with those.

TweetDeck is also a pretty huge memory hog. I noticed sound skips a lot when it pops up with updates. I've been thinking of not using it but I kinda hate to ditch it since Facebook's new news feed is garbage. :C

[Yokuutsu]

On Chrome...-has to think- Go to under the hood...which is under options on the wrench...make sure Enable phishing and malware protection is unchecked...that will cut your RAM usage by a hell of a lot. To my knowledge there is no like thing for firefox. You're just stuck.

[Cyanide Lollipop]

Alright, thanks! I'll try using Chrome for a bit and see if that helped.

Though when I first got back on when I got home a bit ago, it doesn't seem that memory or CPU usage are really spiking during skips, it's still only about 50-60% for both. One of my friends suggested it might be something with the sound card in which case I'm kinda screwed since I don't know anything about replacing hardware. X_X

[Yokuutsu]

50-60% is still a hell of a lot of CPU/RAM to be used. Also, have you updated Java and Flash and all that stuff?

[Cyanide Lollipop]

I update when I get prompts too, but I'll doublecheck I have the latest versions. Thanks for all the suggestions by the way!

Edit: Okay so I have the right version of Java, I was going to install Flash player 11 but it says it doesn't support 64-bit Vista so I didn't want to touch that.