I will give $100 to the person who can solve this problem once and for all.

Question

I'm not even kidding, dude. We can do PayPay, I'll mail you a check, whatever you want. That is how frustrating this is, that is how badly I want it fixed, and that is how much overtime I've worked lately thanks to being shorthanded at my place of biz-nass. I'm an hombre of my word, so if you actually come up with a solution that works, the cheddar will be yours. Okay let's hit it.
It's the skipping thing. First 10-12 seconds of a song - every song - will play fine, then iTunes skips, stutters, and basically does the god **** hokey pokey and shakes it all about. It happens most notably with songs that I double-click to play, but I'm pretty much noticing it on any song now after a transition is made. I've been using iTunes for ages and this didn't happen until the upgrade to 7.3. I have poured over these forums for nearly a week, tried every solution offered (even offered one of my own that actually worked for maybe four days before the whole thing started up again) and NOTHING. To save us all some time, here's what I've tried:
- Downgrading. I'll admit I didn't do this correctly at first. I didn't remove everything according to the support guidelines, but I went down to version 6.05 and that did nothing to quell the skipping. I upgraded back up to 7.3 because hey, why not, and attempted the remaining trial fixes. I have since removed both iTunes and Quicktime, step my step according the the guidelines, and not only have I downgraded to my current running version of 7.2, I put both of the programs on my F drive (as opposed to the default C drive), my gigantic bonus internal drive where I typically keep nothing but my giganto music library. I thought putting the app on the same drive as the music might fix things. I thought wrong. Dead wrong. Dead diddly dum iddly wrong.
- Quicktime settings. My settings for Quicktime have always been in safe mode with the output size at 16 bits. So when I saw this "fix" I just rolled my eyes. I used to have that dealio back in the dizzle when iTunes would just get all static-y and skip when I'd open other programs or even just minimize it, so that fix worked for that, but it's nothing compared to this. In simpler terms, that fix is like Superman, and this skipping? The kryptonite. Actually that's probably not a great metaphor, but we've got a ways to go and this is going to get mucho boring if I don't throw some chuckles out there. Ready for fix three? Giddy up!
- Turn off cross-fade? It's never been on. I never really got the appeal of that, and also I think it resulted in some minor skipping back in the d. I also attempted similar fixes like turning off the equalizer, messing with the volume, closing last.fm, REMOVING an old album art retrieval program from back before iTunes got its **** together with album art, ANYTHING that might interfere with playback was turned off, removed, b-slapped, and sent crying home to its moms. Nada.
- Recreating my library. This was the fix I offered someone else, because it actually did the trick for a few days. After an entire night spent reimporting 73 gigs worth of music, it played fine, but I did lose a ton of album art, playcounts, etc, so you can imagine how ****** I was when this wound up not being a permanent fix. I was beyond ******. I was livid. But I was taught in the dojos of my youth to channel my anger into productivity, and instead of sculpting a lovely bonsai tree, I set out to fix this pup once and for all.
- That darn anti-virus! This was the final fix I tried, even though I wasn't using any of the culprit programs listed in the forums as causes of the skipping, and even those offering this as a solution confessed it was pretty hit or miss. But having tried everything else, having resorted to playing my music on MediaMonkey of all things, I figured I'd give it a shot. I used (reason for the past-tense forthcoming) AVG Anti-Virus, Lavasoft AdAware and something called Spyware Doctor that I think just came bundled with XP. I removed all of them. I had just done a virus scan recently to see if that's what was causing this, so I figured I'd be okay until I could redownload them after this fix wound up not working. And it didn't work, so there's that.
There may be a couple of fixes I've tried that I'm forgetting now, since I'm delirious after spending practically every night for the past week trying to fix this problem, while my girlf, Heather, sits and laughs at me while watching Clark and Michael on her MacBook. In fact, she's laughing at the $100 offer as I type this, but I assure you, if you offer a solution that works, the money is as good as yours. If you come up with a workable solution, I'll have to test and make sure it isn't temporary like the recreating my library thing, but I won't leave you hanging once I'm satisfied that it's fixed for good. I know it's unorthodox, perhaps illegal in some states, but I'm desperate here, peeps. The ball is in your court, and I beg you not to give up the rock.
Gateway E-2000 Windows XP

Answer 1

I think the problem lays with Last.fm. I had the same exact problem as you. In your processes screen, end the task "lastfmhelper.exe" Last.fm still scrobbles. The tracks don't skip, although I notice there is still a bit of a lag in the first part of the song - but if you can deal with that, no skipping. I think you will have to end that task everytime you boot up your computer, or uninstall last.fm completely until they fix it; it is a bug in their software, as opposed to iTunes.