Windows audio skipping when CD Drive in use

5 week old laptop, no spyware. All audio played from the computer is scratchy/skipping when a CD is being read. If I slap in a CD during the boot right about as the Windows logon sound about to play, it skips. The sound problems correlates directly with hard drive activity light (as the light blinks, the audio cuts out). However, audio plays fine when there is not a CD in the drive (mp3 files through WMP, itunes etc...)

This leads to a major problem for me : I cannot play audio CDs or DVDs in the laptop at a playable level at all. The skipping is constant.

I did a google search, which led me to the following fixes that I've tried and have not worked.

Disabled/reenabled DMA on IDE controllers.
Checked for any reported IRQ conflicts (none found)
Flashed the BIOS to the newest version
Reinstalled audio driver.
Disabled any DLA-related programs from running.

If it makes a difference, the Toshiba laptop is a new Satellite using a conexant integrated sound card.

Can anyone provide me additional resources to figure this out? ...I'm gonna feel so stupid if this turns out to be a software issue (as I'm considering getting Toshiba to send me a replacement drive)--so any suggestions would be MUCH appreciated.

TIA

probably the protection used on the cd, Try a few cd's to see if you get the same issue with them all or just the one. If it is only that cd just rip it with EAC and play them from the HDD. I bought a new cd a few months ago and it sounds crap in my pc skips and cuts out but works fine in a normal cd player

Have had the same problem on multiple CDs--commercial audio CDs and DVDs, as well as regularly burned discs. I'm confident its not anything to do with the media.

I'm suffering from the exact same problem on my Dell Inspiron E1505 notebook.

I'm able to rip/burn CD's, but a recent attempt at ripping a DVD to my harddrive (in an attempt to bypass the failure of the DVD reader) eventually ended in a critical Windows error. Microsoft Help seemed to think the problem was driver related, but no luck with a driver reinstall.

OMG
I'm facing the exact same problem. And I have a Toshiba Satellite as well except mine is about a year and half old.
Did you figure out what was wrong and how to fix it?
Thanks,
-Lourdes

I'm having EXACTLY the same problem. It started today on my Dell Inspiron 6400 running Windows XP professional. At first I thought it was hardware related, but I tried a CD after booting in Dell MediaDirect (it's a seperate Windows install), and on there it works fine. So it must be a Windows driver . I'll post any updates.

Fixed it! I uninstalled the "Secondary IDE Channel" in device manager, then clicked "Scan for new hardware". It found the IDE channel and my DVD drive and was able to enable DMA on it. The problem seems to be that DMA could not be enabled for some reason.

One annoyance though... the drive used to be F: and now is D:... guess I'll just have to get used to the new letter :P. A small price to pay for having a working drive.

LOL fixed that too :P. With an external hard drive and SD card plugged in to take up drives D: and E: when scanning for new hardware, it is again F:!