System randomly jitters and skips

[SleazyE]

Hey all, I just rebuilt my current system: VPR Matrix 1820 - 1.8Ghz p4, 512ram (2x256 kingston), 2x80gig drives, winxppro (legit).

Before building rebuilding (or rather, reinstalling everytyhing from a fresh hd) i nuked both hard drives using Darik's boot and nuke. Well, I just moved back home with it and now that I listen to music (via winamp), I find there is a random skip in a song... something that for the last 3 months hasn't been. It actually makes the entire system jitter for a second and catch back up.

This problem is what caused me to nuke my hard drives in the first place. Is this a sign that my hard drive (windows one) is dying? I don't hear any squeeling, but when i movemy mouse to surf the mouse will freeze for a split second. This machine is up to date with all upgrades, BIOS flashes, and drivers.

I looked at the task manager and the processor gets a 20-22% spike every 45 seconds when i'm listening to music and right at the jitter in the song, the spike occurs. The process is called "System" that is owned by SYSTEM. The size is 224k. Regardless of listening to music, the spike occurs and causes the computer to freeze