Nooooooo!

OK, I do have one more suggestion, but I think uppy ruled out this possibility by using the dxdiag earlier.

Go to Control Panel, Sound and Audio Devices, Hardware tab and double click on Audio Codecs. In the Properties tab, double click on "Windows Media Audio". Make sure "Use this audio codec" is selected, and change it's priority to 1, if it isn't already.

it was priority 7. now let me test this puppy out.

no dice

I think I've found your problem jpf, you've been trying to play your music through a puppy instead of a laptop!

I can't see anything else that would cause this problem. A re-install would rule it out completely, but I do believe it is most likely hardware at this point. I'll get in touch with our tech lead just in case he has any more idea's.

To be honest....it could very well be malware....Can you start playing a song, and check your task manager? SHIFT+CTRL+ESC and then select the Processes tab and sort by CPU usage...what processess are running at 100%?

just system idle process as would be expected...