Pops and stuttering regardless of sound card

Hi folks. As per the title, I am experiencing these issues regardless of selected card. The pops, stutters, etc occur regardless of CPU load and appear sporadically with no clear relation to a specific activity. I currently use a Creative Xmod, and while I did see the Creative thread, my problem exists regardless of chip, media player, etc. I replicated the problem on several other cards, Creative or otherwise. Of course it exists using the on-board sound.

The only thing I see that is out of sorts is that Windows does not offer a "stereo" option in the speakers config tab. 5.1 is the only available option. I am outputting to stereo. Would this setting cause conflict?

I'm running RC 7100 on ATI SB450. Driver was installed by Win via update, and is reported as correct. But that shouldn't be an issue with external cards? :huh:

It's driving me nuts! Any information or ideas are very, very welcome! Thank you!

Oops...forgot to add that speakers/amp, etc have been eliminated as a source of the problem.

Have you had this issue on this hardware while running a different OS like XP or Vista? And was that in 32bit or 64bit?

Get another monitor and hook it up to your computer. Download VLC player and install. Start up a video on your computer using VLC player. Maximize the video to your main screen. You will notice that it makes the popping noise when the little menu at the bottom disappears. To fix this, move the little menu to your second monitor. Then click on the maximized video on your main screen; then move your mouse to the second screen. And then shut off the second screen and enjoy your non-popping video.