Songs skip when playing on itunes

Question

Is anyone else having problems with their songs skipping on itunes (both saved audio files and audio cds) when they play fine on other players like windows media player. My itunes was working fine until about two weeks ago when the program seemed to create havic on my computer. It killed my internet explorer, then itunes and quicktime wouldn't uninstall on my computer. Finally removed programs using windows cleanup utility program. Have installed/ uninstalled program several times since with no luck. The songs keep skipping and slowing down. Even tried updating drivers. Seems to play fine as long as I'm not running anyother program on the computer, but as soon as I run another program or even minimize/ maximize the itunes media player skipping starts (even though only using like 4% computer power). Even tried installing stand alone quicktime player. Nothing works. The apple techs have to be the worst support on the planet. Sent hrs on the phone with them. Please help or let me know if u are having similar problems. Thanks Tom

Answer 1

I've had problems as well. I get "crackling" when I play songs using iTunes. When it happens, it appears that the program is getting bogged down because the mouse doesn't move smoothly across the screen. I've been trying many ways of troubleshooting it including the "waveout" option and keep coming up empty. I've tested identical tracks on Windows Media Player and found them to play perfectly on WMP. What is also baffling is that I can still burn playlists using iTunes and then play the burned CD on another computer or CD player with no sound problems whatsoever. Someone suggested it could be connected to compatibility with a Windows update like Service Pack 2 for WINXP, but I know for a fact the program was fine when SP2 was installed.
Here's a brief history of my troubleshooting:
Everything with my system was working fine.
Computer was getting bogged down playing Sim City, games on pogo.com, and itunes was crackling.
Left for work one day and iTunes was working. Came home the next day and the program dumped EVERYTHING. It did not carry a single song in the library and all 52 playlists were gone even though all files were still sitting in the iTunes folder as they always were. Each playlist xml file I found and opened with Notepad showed only the playlists that come with the program and nothing I had created. I'm assuming this issue occurred because of a corrupted xml library file or there was a conflict with my old 20GB hard drive that used to house the old OS and program files (that hard drive has since been wiped).
Did major utitility maintenance: 3 Spyware programs, 2 antivirus, Norton Utlities Disc Cleanup/defragged/etc and what little spyware found were cookies.
I considered that there may be files corruption, so I tried playing mp3 tracks from the library using Windows Media Player and had no sound problems at all!! Of course, the majority of my library is in apple's aac fomat.
I also decided to see what would happen if I burned a CD through iTunes. The CD works great!
I also get crackling when I play CDs through the CD Rom with iTunes and do not when I use Windows Media Player.
I also considered that it was a specific format causing the issue: mpeg layer 3 or 4. Songs crackle across the board.
Uninstalled iTunes again. Downloaded and installed iTunes 5 today. Songs still crackle!
I also used regedit and ccleaner to clean up the computer as well. Still no luck.