UPDATE:
I tried it on my other CD drive and it does the same thing.
 
I don't remember this happening on my old KT7 system.
 
Any ideas?

The CD in question - was it burned on your Ricoh?

No, it was burnt on a friends TDX 12x CyClone drive

UPDATE - tried a mp3 cd burnt on my drive and on my friends mitsumi 4804TE and the same happens

What slot does your Audigy occupy on your board? I have read that putting it in slot 3 and assigning it to IRQ 5 has cleared up audio skipping problems.

would that have an effect on skipping video as well though?
 
Currently my card is in slot 2 with IRQ12 (according to XP - not sure about it's true IRQ)
 
but, as before, I didn't have these problems on my KT7-RAID.

Yes, remember that the video has to sync with the audio. If it were skipping audio wouldn't it have to re-sync with the video?

Hmm. I don't much fancy mucking around with my IRQs. I have a PC which is working semi-well at the moment.
 
On a side note, my PC is never ever stable from a cold boot (roughly an hour since it has been on last).
I always have to reset the machine before I can use it.
 
Is this related?

I am not exactly sure what you mean. You power down, let the machine remain off for a while. Then, when you power it up, it doesn't come up but hangs, and you have to hit the reset button?

mmmmm, do you have it on 'Hardware' or software' exceleration for your vid card? in PowerDVD i know u can change this option, just a suggestion, and all i can think of.

If you have to reset your machine to get a stable boot, or to boot at all then there is DEFINATELY a problem with your power supply. Either it simply can't handle the load, or is trying to die on you. This could affect all of the things you have mentioned sofar.

Sampson - not quite.
What will happen if I leave it on without rebooting is it will run for 5-10 minutes without any problems, then all of a sudden it will lock up or simply reboot, but after that it is stable as a rock and will NOT crash
So, what I do is I will let it boot up to the XP login screen, and simply tell it to restart through the shutdown box. This seems to do the trick and it's stable after. It's an annoying problem.
 
As for the power supply, I am looking to get a new one when I catually have some money (funds are INCREDIBLY short at the moment)
 
Anyway, I was randomly playing MP3s off my hard disk just now, and it skipped!
I'm beginning to think it's either a problem with mpeg audio, or it's my audigy not liking where it's sat

And as for the hardware acceleration thing - I have tried it on or off.
 
To make note of ANOTHER problem I am having - when the sound gets loud on a DVD, or my PC is under some load whilst watching a DVD, I will get pops at regular intervals until the action dies down again. No doubt another problem with where my cards are sat.

Everything seems to be leading to your Audigy card. The crackles and pops, skipping, etc., are all known to be SB related. If it is skipping from your Hard drive, your CD drive, your DVD drive, they become irrelevant. What links them is your soundcard.
 
Anyway, when XP first boots up, it reads from the EPROM about your computer setup, and just a whole bunch of stuff including keyboards, floppies, (whatever) and "reconstructs" the Registry and then checks to see if every thing is as it says it is. After bootup your first time, when you reboot, it reconstructs the Registry again, but is probably getting different values or taking the devices in a different order which seems to make your machine more stable. This is relevant, but one problem at a time.
 
If you will bring up your Device Manager, then go to Hardware, then View, then Resources by type, then click on the (+)next to interrupt request (IRQ), this will indicate what devices share the same interrupt. In my system the sound card, the USB, the Video card, and the ethernet card all share the same interrupt. In my case this is 11. What this means is that ACPI is in charge. I installed Windows defaulting to Windows way of doing things. Some, because of Bios issues, Via drivers, or wanting to control their own IRQ's from Bios, hit f5 or F7 when they clean installed and chose to use System Computer and disallow ACPI running.
 
For a lot of people sharing the same interrupt has been no problem. For some it has seemed to be a nightmare. Anyway, if your devices are sharing the same IRQ, moving the soundcard physically ahead of the other cards (usually to a slot closer to the AGP slot) has cleared up the problem.
 
This goes back to your boot up. If a device installs itself (and it often seems random) before another, the system runs fine. But, when one jumps in and grabs "the lion share" of resources before its time, the system crashes for seemingly no reason because another device is in need of those resources. I am not using correct computereze, but I hope this is clear.

Aware of this I am already
[/yoda]
 
I conducted a lot of research into this when I was trying to get my SBLive working on my KT7-RAID.
In the end I had to manually assign IRQs to everything, but it worked in the long run.
When I put my audigy into my KT7, it worked straight away with no problems, so I assumed it would in my KR7A as well, as it did seem to, until these niggling problems came out.
 
So, do you suggest that moving my audigy may stop all of my problems altogether?

It has for some. It would seem to be the easiest thing to do since it only requires physically moving the card. I have been told that moving it higher on the PCI chain gives it more juice. I'm no engineer. I have seen heavy duty gamers do nothing more than reshuffle cards to get the best performance from their system.
 
You didn't mention if your devices were on the same IRQ. Anyway, moving the Audigy card should have no effect on Windows setup.
 
Perhaps, going to a SB based message board with the symptoms you now have established might yeild a solution if you feel hesitant about moving the card.

Hmm. I have my worries.
Usually when I move a card I'll get a whole slew of IRQ conflicts and my system will keel over and die.
It's happened many a time before.

I don't blame you. I don't know why it would mess up your IRQ's, but experience is sometimes all we can rely on. I didn't upgrade my SBLive drivers 'til 4 days ago. I used the ones that W2k installed for the card though after 6 months everytime I would reboot I got a message that something like NevLdr.dll (or something like that) wouldn't end its task. This is one of those SB issues. I lived with that for a long time because I just didn't want to get into driver issues between SB and W2k. When I saw that creative's drivers were approved (after apparently several iterations), I held my breath and did it.
 
I do a lot of breath holding when I install new things.

Dazultra,
 
Found this page: http://mipagina.cantv.net/guizzo/ It is a FAQ for the Audigy cards. Interesting read.

Dazultra,
 
I one of the other forums here, found this conversation:
 
how did you get your live to work with your dragon plus?
my audigy locks up my system every time i try to install it!
 
had to put it in PCI slot 6. PCI 1-3 cause problems