This is an interesting thread. I observed the same startup sound
'stuttering' both with an AMD based system and a wIntel based system. Same
video card (Asus V8200 pure), same drivers (anything later than 41.09's),
same DX (9.0a), same soundcard (cheezy EQ/CL PCI128). My AMD-based mobo was
using the VIA northbridge. My wIntel board is using the wIntel northbridge.
I can't see this as being a chipset issue, as some others have mentioned in
this thread. As for startup progs, it's quite possible that the NVidia
startup progs may have contributed. I never investigated as I was just
mainly annoyed by that stutter and went back to the 41.09's. I've always
used the default drivers, that come with XP, for the PCI128 card. There are
no startup progs involved with that driver.

--
I'm sorry. Apparently, I'm feeling a little too psychotic this morning.

-The main character in Postal 2

"Tech Support" wrote in message
...
I ran PCIlist and it made mention of the fact my video card may be
hogging the PCI bus. I was runnign the beta 44.65 drivers and noticed
in XP that on boot up the start sound would slightly stutter. I have
an Audigy2. Did a bit of digging around on Google and found others
with the same issue, including people using 44.03 drivers and up.
Seems the fix is to isntall 43.45 and down drivers. I did this and
sure enough it fixed the stuttering sound on XP boot up. This does
imply to me that the more recent Nvidia drivers may well be hogging
the bus and causing a problem for my Audigy2 as they are both bus
mastering cards. Anybody else seen similar issues?