I have a Compaq laptop with Windows XP SP2 installed, and it has worked wonderfully up til now. I am troubleshooting this problem for my mom, so I can't tell you exactly what happened or changed recently when the problem started occurring (she has no idea), but here goes.

Whenever any type of audio is played in windows, whether it be the startup sound, a music track, or whatever, the sound is "skipping." It's very similar to what you might get if the resources seem real tied up and the computer is having trouble playing the sound and doing several things at once. However, there is really not that much going on.

I have run countless spyware scans, antivirus scans, rootkit detectors, process explorers, all in an attempt to figure out if there was anything causing this or anything hogging my memory. There's not. At least I don't think. Any suggestions on what to do from here would be most appreciated. Thanks.

Can you post the model of the Compaq laptop, and i will try to find up to date sound card drivers for you. Also Under sounds, game and audio devies in Device Manager what is your sound card?

It's a Compaq Presario V5000. The sound card appears to be a Conexant AC-Link Audio.

Try re installing the sound card drivers. They are found here: Conexant AC-Link Audio Driver Compaq Presario V5000 CTO Notebook PC

Ok, I installed the latest drivers. This obviously is probably unrelated, but it seems the problem has gotten worse. Now my touchpad mouse is not working (I can connect another mouse if needed) and the sound problem is worse than before.

I can't stress enough that the pc is just slugging along. It is SO slow, and never has been like this! There are no viruses or rootkits that I can find, and no processes in process explorer are taking up a lot of memory. EXCEPT: System Idle Processes are taking up between 60-100% of the memory. But obviously this fluctuates depending on how much memory is being used...

Can you follow the Pre Work link in my sig and post the resulting logs, for the security team to look at.


Also here is the driver for your mouse : Synaptics Touchpad Compaq Presario V5000 CTO Notebook PC

Ok, I have completed ALL of the prework.

1. I ran the AVG Scan in Safe mode and selected all the preferences you told me to, but for some reason it did not save a scan result. I remember what came up though. I had about 100 tracking cookies, then one Hijacker. I believe it was called Hijacker.small. I followed your recommendation and quarantined everything (for some reason it deleted the tracking cookies anyways) and I didn't see the hijacker in the quarantine. Weird.

2. Secondly, I ran the SUPERAntiSpyware Scan and it did not find anything significant. 10 more tracking cookies, nothing else. Again, the scan log did not save. I promise I'm looking for them! gah.

3. I ran CCleaner and cleaned up as much as I could. Good utility, I had almost forgotten about it.

4. I have attached my HiJackThis log. At least that one saved xD Before you complain about AOL being installed, it's my mom. She refuses to stop using it, even if I tell her it'd be easier if she didn't. Oh well.

Thanks for your help in advance.

PS: The touchpad still doesn't work every so often. Sometimes it does, sometimes I have to reboot the computer to get it to start working. Yes, I reinstalled the driver.

Attached Files

hijackthis.log (7.9 KB, 3 views)