Everytime I click on a link on a web page while my mp3s are playin it skips for about 5 seconds. I find this really annoying. Does anyone know why an mp3 would skip when you click on a site or start a new program or anything basically that involves bringing up another application on your computer and how to fix it so it doesnt do it anymore?
Thanks for your help! 
I’ve seen similar symptoms on certain sound cards. Fully uninstalling and then re-installing the sound card drivers has helped. I’ve also seen it on certain music (not sound) cards like the Digital Audio Labs CardD+.
But to really answer your question, I’d need more info about your hardware and software.
Have you tried dusting off the needle? That might be the problem. Or maybe you should take your MP3s out and examine them for scratches. That should do it, I think.
Well now that you mention it my sound has been skipping ever since a failed attempt to install a sound card. Music and wavs skip everytime i try to bring up a new program. Also after I put in my sound card my printer stopped working. the printer port just disappeared from the system profile. I have no clue what was wrong with it. I even took out the sound card and uninstalled the hardware but it still skips and the printer port is still no where to be found.
Damn I need a new comp…
Anyone intersted in a sound skipping non printer working computer?
Are you thinking of CDs? MP3s are songs you download off the internet and are stored in your hard drive for your listening pleasure. And theyre free!! free stuff rule!!
Those music industry bastards better not go after my precious napster! :mad:
Hey man, if space isn’t a big concern (as in hard drive space) you should consider converting all your mp3’s to wav’s. they are a LOT bigger, but they play a lot better.
This is also a great idea if you are going to burn them. Yeah, I know that Adaptec 4 and other programs will supposedly convert mp3 AND wavs to CDA, but wav burns a lot smoother. more smoothly? Whatever. You know what I mean, anyway, try that, and I bet they won’t skip.
And what that one dude said about uninstalling and reinstalling your sound card drivers is a good idea, too.
Check it out, see what happens.
You might not need a new computer after all. I can think of a few problems that would cause both symptoms (and in a new computer, too)
Many Soundblasters (i.e. post SB32), for example, require that certain driver files be deleted manually before re-installation to solve this particular problem (for most problems, uninstalling is enough)
What Sound card do you have
I have a Soundblaster AudioPCI 64v sound card.
You might want to consider running an alternative operating system. My MP3’s skip something fierce under Win9x when I attempt to do use my machine for something other than an expensive CD player (music and vocals by Max Headroom), but not under Linux or NT. Without descending too far into the technobabble, the reason for it is that Win9x doesn’t multitask well. As decompressing the MP3 bitstream on the fly is fairly processor-intensive, when you ask Win9x to do something else for a moment, it forgets to give enough processor time to the MP3 player, and the MP3 player screws up. Linux and NT are a lot better in the multitasking department.
your system might be too slow to play mp3s and do other things without skipping.
but you can change the cpu priority to the highest level and that may help. its in the settings in winamp.
chief and Cowboy Greg are on the right track.
If you have a single CPU machine, it can only do one thing at a time. Multi-tasking OSes give you the appearance that you can do more than one thing at once, but behind the scenes it is one CPU sharing its time between the different tasks. This is usually fine if the processes are not time-sensitive, such as compiling a program or calculating the Nth digit of pi. However, if it is something you’ll notice, e.g. playing an mp3, playing RealAudio, you’ll notice if that activity doesn’t get enough CPU. How much is enough depends on the system.
For example, a fast system might only need 20% of the CPU’s attention to play an mp3, while a slow system might need 60%. If you then do anything else, such as open a new window, and that task momentarily takes more than the ‘spare’ amount above the mp3 player, you will get a pause in the music, which may sound to you like a skip.
On some OSes you can give your mp3 player more priority (NT: Use the Task Manager and set the priority to Real Time. Don’t do this if you can’t handle your system crashing more than it already does - it’ll probably be OK but you can’t always be sure.) This will give more time to the mp3 player when it needs it - other tasks will slow down a bit. However, that won’t eliminate the problem entirely, as your system can still get busy enough that it can’t handle it.
On my PII 400 MHz with 256 MB RAM I can play mp3 files with few gaps only if I reprioritize my player. That eliminates 80% of the gaps, but occasionally when I’m running tons of other stuff I still get skips.
Finally, you can play a CD instead - the CD player function of the computer doesn’t take any CPU to accomplish, so you should never get software gaps like with an mp3. You can still get hardware skips, though.
I cured my skips when I changed my “Energy Saver” options on the Start/System Settings/Control Panel page
It turned out I had it set for 3 minutes to spin down the disk drive.
When the song started, it was mainly in real memory, but at some point either it had to reload or the system decided to backup virtual memory, or some such.
The disk light would come on and my song would stop until it went off again.
So, I set the sleeper time to 30 min and the trouble went away.
May not be your problem, but it’s worth checking.
That’s interesting as I have no problem with Realjukebox under W98 but terrible skipping when trying to record CD tracks on my NT workstation at the office. What CD driver do you use?
This page will take you through diagnosis and repair of your card. I saw a similar problem once with the ISA version of the SB64
BTW, I do Linux, BeOs, Mac too – but there is NO reason that even a Pentium 100 can’t play MP3’s run Word95 and surf the web at the same time, under Win95. Until a few months ago, I routinely did exactly that on my “book machine” that I use to research/write in the basement
(Man, I was sorry to see that machine go - but a relative needed one pronto, and the P-100 was already set up w/ all the software.)
Win9x has a lot of terrible qualities, but it gets wrongly blamed for a lot of things. Of course, the biggest reason it gets blamed is that it makes it very difficult to see many of the types of errors and accumulated junk that arise (and mutation from its instability), so I definitely don’t let it off the hook. Those tens of thousands of inscrutable registry keys really stink as a design philosophy.
Backing up all your data (ini files, etc.) wiping your hard drive and re-installing your OS/apps can reinvigorate a machine you thought was uselessly slow. It might take all afternoon, but you’d probably have to do much of that work if you bought a new machine anyway.
Your CD player has a needle?
Yeah its a magical cd player 
BTW – please remember that the OP’s MP3’s played just fine before. This rules out most of the above suggestions.
It might be useful for some of the posters to look into other MP3 players. I find that there is easily an order of magnitude of difference between the CPU load of the best and the worst. (Actually the problem is more with the software’s ability to cache, change its own priority (since win9x won’t let you set it) and other variables.)
Right now I’m on a Celeron 466 w/ 64Mb (hardly a powerhorse) and wintop is showing that WinAmp2.2 is consuming 0.5% - 2% CPU load. On my P-100, I believe that it peaked at 14%-20%, but only during startup. You don’t need a fast machine to play MP3’s, but proper configuration and the right software is a big help. That’s why I never upgraded after WinAmp2.22.
I have never had that problem up until about a week or so ago and now mine skip too… I dont understand why its all of a sudden happening? I use winamp