FCP playback stalling

Hi,
I've had my Dual 2Ghz G5 for about a year now and ever since I got it it has had stalling problems playing back in the timeline. Its rare that I could play back a ten minute video to tape without the image freezing for a second or two. I had no problems on my G4 400 mhz. I am using FCP 5.1.2, OS 10.4.8, all Pro App support updates and 2.5GB Ram. Things were a little more stable on OS 10.3.8 with FCP 4.5. Maybe I have a CPU problem or hard drive problem? Apple hardware tests don't seem to indicate anything. I had the problem with the factory RAM that was installed with it and still with new Kensington RAM. Same problem whether I write to external Lacie drive or the internal drive.
I have usually worked around this by always delivering on DVD-Rs but today its stalling quite a lot just trying to get the edit done!
Any advice? Swap my main hard drive..?
Thanks,
Sam
G5 Dual 2Ghz G4 Powerbook 867Mhz   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

first off, don't store your media on the internal hard drive ... although some people get by just fine doing this,, its not recommended and can cause exactly the symptoms you are seeing.
set your capture scratch to your external drive, move existing media onto that drive, and reconnect as necessary.
you mention that the problem persists even when you are using the external.
how big is your external drive, how full is it, and how is it connected? is it plugged in to front fw port on the g5 or back? are there any other firewire devices connected to other ports? is it daisychained with any other devices?
do you have any antivirus software installed? third party background processes? how many other apps do you have running at the same time? email or web-browser open? how full is your system disk?
try creating a brand new user account in os x. log into that one and launch fcp, then see if you can import and playback media from the external with or without these stalls.
Cheers
Andy

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