Windows 7 - Media stutters every 30 seconds

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop. Two years old. I'll be watching a movie or listening to audio and it will stutter for 1-3 seconds every 30seconds to two minutes. I did a memory diagnosis and there was no error to be found. It only started yesterday after I uninstalled a few unnecessary programs and turned a few things off in command prompt. I undid what I did yesterday and it made no difference. I'm not overly intelligent when it comes to issues with my laptop so if explanations could be somewhat simplified that would make things a lot easier. Thanks.

Welcome to Sevenforums fdamp!

Firstly, Microsoft fixes to try:
Diagnose and repair sound playback problems automatically
Playing video files crashes or freezes Internet Explorer or Windows
Fix Windows Media Player video, and other media or library issues

Things to check:
1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to access Windows Task Manager. In a Preformance tab check CPU usage and Memory usage in %. Does percentage peaks correspond with moments of stuttering? On Processes tab of the same window check if there is any other application, besides your media, that actively taking up resources (CPU and Memory columns).

2. Check your internet connection speed with something like Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test or other similar website...
May be something is wrong with a line or provider.

By the way, what media player do you use?

When I watched the CPU as the audio played, it spiked to between 22-28% when it stuttered whereas it is usually between 5-12%. Nothing else was using up much CPU in the process tab.

When watching videos I use the windows media player. But I watch shows online and on youtube as well and they have the same issue.

Download speed is 2.58mbps / Upload speed is 0.72mbps

Try Microsoft fixes, may be something is wrong with codecs.

Also, shut off internet and try to play some local copies of music/video.

I attempted to restore my computer and it froze. After shutting it off and trying to turn it back on, there was major startup issues. It refused to work at all last night or this morning and after it did a startup repair it informed me that my System Volume on disk is corrupt. After reading that and restarting my computer, it logged in fine. But what does that mean and how would I be able to fix it?

I would test an hdd drive for hardware problems with Seagate SeaTools for Windows.
It is free and drive brand does not matter.

Basic tests:
SMART check - for sure
Short Drive Self Test - for sure
Short Generic - for sure

Same issue. Dell is 2 years old. This just started in December 2011. I've tried Youtube, iTunes, Netflix and Windows audio test programs and every 30 seconds, I get what sounds like a 1-2 second CODEC failure, then all is well. I tried memory tests, checked to see if there were updates to the windows7 drivers, HDD tests and nothing. Nothing really in the log files either. CPU does not appear to spike during the failure. Your post is the second one I have seen. Perhaps, this is a capacitor failure or some update to the CODEC that is ponly effecting sertain vintages of Inspiron.

Dell screwed me last year when I had insurance, and an HDD failure.... and they told me it was a software issue (which I did not have maintenance on). 2 days of working with India, and they finally listened to me and sent me a new HDD. Problem solved. So, I'm not too keen on trying Dell support again.... and paying another 2 bills.

I tried to do a restore-point to an earlier date, and that did not work too.

Any ideas, would be helpful!

I hadn't done any windows updates in a while so i did a load last night and since then I've been getting the freeze thing every 30 seconds (youtube, local vids and music...). Tried a bunch of things to get rid of it and trying to uninstall as many of the updates from last night as possible but there are sooo many to do...

Has anyone worked out a way to fix this yet?