HardWare Problems in Win2000

[Xster]

i've got a friend who says ever since he upgraded to Win2000 his sound doesn't play properly and he can't listen to Mp3's w/o them skipping. Also, he says his CPU is going crazy and the slightest program makes the usage charts jump up and down. He has an Athlon 1.0Ghz, 320 SD Ram, 40 GB Maxtor, Geforce 2 32MB, and a Hercules Muse XI 4.0. He says that before, on Linux or Win98, the CPU and sound was perfectly fine. I told him to look for new sound drivers but i dunno about the CPU, any suggestions?

*edit* he already took the stuff in his comp out (in case there were any compatibility issues) and it still didn't work. he tried installing WinXP on it and it just freezes after loading the drivers...

[hifi]

What type of application is he running when his cpu goes "crazy"? Has he noticed degrading performance in his cpu since switching platforms? It is quite normal for CPU activity to jump all over the chart, but only when performing a task. Is it doing this when idle too?

[SPEEDO]

Did he do a clean install or an upgrade.

I myself like to do a clean install rather than an upgrade it seems you can avoid a lot of issues that way. Also before a clean install of a new OS it's good to wipe the drive using Maxtors Powermax utilty. IMHO