Eddie, Scott,
I'm not sure only Skype is to blame, but possibly a combination of some programs.
After the first time I installed Skype (few months ago) I found some changes in the firewall-settings (it was set to OFF)..... don't like that ! (so I removed Skype)
Since a few weeks I reinstalled Skype, again noticed the slowing system, switched all ad-aware alikes to OFF, switched off all not used devices, freed IRQ's, moved PCI boards, changed performance settings.....none helped.
Of course I did monitor the CPU-load (process-busy times) but found no excessive %'s.
After the disc-restore without Skype I installed Hitman-Pro2 what contains a lot of spyware stuff. (Spybot, Spysweeper Ad-Aware etc.) Norton Antivirus is running all the time.
It's not that Skype takes too much CPU-processing time, but it did change something in IRQ's/DMA parameters.
Every time the HDD's have a 'job'to do, dropouts appear.
Please do read the '?' in my heading
Some extra information :
Guillermo just called telling me he has serious problems using Audio-files on his PC.... since he installed Skype
Norton Autoprotect was switched off since Skype and he is not able to set it to ON again. (won't accept the command)
Guillermo removed Skype and re-installed the audio-driver..... problem vanished.
[This message has been edited by Roel (edited 06-19-2005).]