ok so, i started playing garry's mod last night and all of a sudden it got really really slow while in the menu at startup of game. it sound looped and sat for about 4 minutes and then it loaded the screen a little more and repeated the same thing..this is the same thing for TF2 and HL2 mods. Ive ran virus scanners, and they aren't picking anything up. the weird part is it just happened out of the blue, one second i was playing, the next second i was changning servers and it just went BAHHHHWWW.

Common problem due to sound card - try the following:

Click Start > Run > Type: dxdiag > Click OK > On the Sound Tab move the Hardware Sound Acceleration slider to No Acceleration > Exit

Goto Control Panel > Sounds & Audio > Select the Audio Tab > Click Advanced > On the performance tab move the slider for Hardware Sound Acceleration to None > Click Apply > Ok > OK

Post back if this doesn't fix your problems.

ok, well it worked a bit..it loads a bit faster and all.

BUT, when i went to do the second thing you told me to do. it says i have no sound device installed. its been doing this a lot lately. so i try playing some music, it says bad sound driver, which i had expected. so i restart my computer and it is all ok (sound wise).

now the problem is what is going on with the sound device disabling and enabling itself all the time i guess..

Have you tried updating the drivers for your soundcard? If not try that first.

If that doesn't help post back with what soundcard you have?