Various Problems probably all linked, I recently purchased San Andreas and have been having problems with it, glitchy play audio out of sync, possibly might of been my onboard CMedia AC97 sound card/chip, so I have purchased a Sound Blaster Audigy2 PCMCIA Card, which in itself is a good card, but didn't change the problem. So I recently re-installed Max Payne, and I have been having sound issues with that, missing sound, clicks/pops etc, which I had never had before, which suggests its not the game(s) fault. I have also noticed that DVD's that I playback with Media Player (or any player) are all out of sync audio/video, I think I can trace this back to roughly the same period as stated below.

My OS is Win XP Pro with Service Pack 2, the Service Pack 2 was installed using a Corporate redist file, on top of an OEM install of XP Pro SP1 from new from Alienware, could this have caused any problems that I might be having? or could a dodgy codec be the problem?

I have run a:
Virus Scan
Defrag
Spyware check
Registry Check, all negative

Any Ideas, or is it obvious that I'm missing it, or am I going to have to reinstall everything again (last resort)

Did you uninstall your AC97 sound drivers and disable the onboard sound via the Bios Startup Screen? If so, do this first and write back.

When we can go to war using a keyboard and a mouse, America will truly kick ass

I've tried to uninstall the drivers but windows just auto-detects it again on restart, and unfortunatly there is no setting in the BIOS to disable it. I have disabled it in Device Manager which doesn't have any effect, short of opening up my laptop to take the chip out, that is all I can manage on that front.

Which leads me to thinking its a rougue codec problem, could or is there any way I could remove all my codecs and start a fresh with them. Then again I could be shooting in the dark