Ok. I'm posting this here because I'm completely confused.
1. I woke up the other morning and opened up my computer lid (I leave it on overnight). It kept trying to boot up, displaying an error message saying something like "Fast Ethernet Controller error. Media cable disconnected. PEX ROM exited.", then restarting.
2. I shut off the computer and turned it back on a couple of times and finally it booted correctly.
3. Then, my sound wouldn't work. I tried to play music in Winamp and it said displayed a sound error message. I looked at all the installed drivers and couldn't find anything not working correctly.
4. I restarted again. Now, everything more or less works. But my computer is running unusually slow. It takes a long time to boot up. And, most tellingly, it's having trouble playing music. It's almost like the processor can't keep up. It'll play music alright, but if I open a new program or it's downloading a webpage or something the music skips. Badly. It crackles like a weak radio station.
I don't know what to do. I've run two virus scans, w/ my native Norton program and an online scan by Trendmicro.com. I've been running a registry cleaner to try and square away my registry errors.
It's running a little better now. But my music is still skipping, though not quite as much. Which is very odd. Wiinamp NEVER gives me problems. Even when Windows has a major hiccup and has to catch up, Winamp still keeps running.
Can anyone help me out? I'm extremely confused.