That's exactly what happened - I wasted most of the day struggling with this. I checked the anti-virus log (nothing), and I ran spyware and adware checkers (which removed a few things, to no avail). And I did a bunch of searching for solutions, which eventually turned up something useful. I found an article that was very technical that claims that MS Windows systems occasionally fall into a trap whereby the ATA and SATA drives have their DMA disabled, which forces them to revert to the less efficient PIO. Nuff said. I only recognized this as significant because one of the symptoms matched the behaviour that I was seeing. The site offered a little script that would reset the ATA devices, thereby re-enabling DMA. With some trepidation I tried it, and it seems to have worked! As I type, I am listening to music that is not skipping or stuttering (R.E.M. at the moment). The little kid across the road is quiet so far today, but I'm ready for him...