Windows 7: Sound Crackling and Distortion through Speakers and Headphones

So it's now 4 in the morning and still no luck with this problem after looking everywhere online.

I'm using an Acer laptop which has been operating fine for the better part of 1 and a half years (or around that).

A while ago I had a crackling noise through my headphones which went away. Now the noise has suddenly come back and it is now accompanied with distortion; it is also present while listening through the speakers. It was not prevelant yesterday but today when I decided to watch something in VLC, the distortion and crackling started. I tried listening through 2 sets of headphones, and shrugged it off as a problem with the video.

After that I tried listening to music in iTunes and the sound distortion was still there. I've only installed skype since yesterday and downloaded a torrent for the video I watched today. I have since deleted the video file.

I have tried uninstalling skype, utilising a system restore, updating drivers, deleting drivers, the works. Nothing is doing anything. I've been trying to solve this for about 5 hours now.

I've also looked at Latency Checker and this is the result:



I'm tired so I'm going to go to bed and sleep off this audio anguish!
I have run out of ideas as to what I can do...

ED: When I woke up today, I turned my laptop on and tested the sound. There isn't any distortion or crackling present. I don't know if this is truly solved, as this is what happened last time. I'm still going to leave this thread open for ideas, as I want to be able to fix the problem if it doesn't fix itself....



ED: Ok so after having the laptop on for about 8 hours, the noise distortion and crackling is back. I am assuming it is a heat problem. Who has had the same problem? If it is not a heat issue what else could it be...?