We had a call from a customer who’s computer sound was stuttering/skipping/popping when they played their music. As you can imagine this was quite uncomfortable on the ear.
Rebooting the computer didn’t fix the problem on this occasion. I verified that the computer had the latest drivers for the sound card and video card installed. Sometimes HD audio drivers are provided as part of the computer’s graphic card drivers.
Upon arriving at the customer’s home and hearing the problem for ourselves, I was able to resolve the problem by removing the sound card devices via the “Device Manager” tool in Windows and then rebooting their computer. During the booting process, the sound card device and associated drivers were reinstalled.
After the computer was fully rebooted, we then listened to some music and the stuttering had stopped.