Issue with Audio

[Jermatoo]

So recently, I've noticed something in my audio has been messed up or has just been straight corrupted and I'm not sure what it is. I'm not sure what causes this problem but here's my computer specs.

Manufacturer: Gateway
Processor: AMD Turion(tm) II Ultra Dual-Core Mobile M600 (2 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Hard Drive: 487 GB
Video Card: AMD M880G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200
Sound Card: Headset Earphone (MadCatz GamePad (Headset))
Keyboard: USB Root Hub
Mouse: USB Root Hub
Operation System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_rtm.090713-1255)

What will happen is that I'll watch a video either through youtube or any other stream service or watch a video I have through either winamp or wmv and then my comp will suddenly freeze up but I can still hear the sound but it sounds all slow staticlike and requires me a hard reset. Any kind of known solutions? I'd also like to add that it started doing this after I had to reformat my computer.

[Azriel2k3]

Are your drivers up to date? If so is there any audio codecs you use, like to listen to AAC or H264 audio feeds.

[Jermatoo]

Are your drivers up to date? If so is there any audio codecs you use, like to listen to AAC or H264 audio feeds.

I checked both my audio drives and they're both up to date as far as I can tell. I tried using the auto fixer from windows but it seems to have made it worse.

[Azriel2k3]

Maybe your sound card is dying, how old is it?

[Jermatoo]

No my computer is only a few years old, still too new for any of these problems to pop up.

[Azriel2k3]

Hmm if that's not the issue then I'm going to fall back on my previous guess that it has something to do with codec's probably competing codecs which is causing the pc to lock up. I think the only way to check that would be to wipe just your audio codecs (and any codec packs you may use) and try a fresh install. Either they've been corrupted somehow or you have 2 codecs that are competing.

[Jermatoo]

Guess it was the audio codecs because I reinstalled them and no freezing so far. We'll see how long this lasts.

[Azriel2k3]

Good to hear, if that was the fix yay, if not then I'm afraid I don't know what else could be the issue.