Weird slow-down?

[Loki]

So this just started happening after I got home from the hospital and it's annoying the f*** out of me. I have iTunes playing and every now and then the musics slows down and sounds all garbled, like the computer is trying to run a ****load of programs at once or something and is being bogged down. This also happens when trying to play stuff in Realplayer, the video slows down and get's all choppy and doesn't sync with the sound.

I think I know where the problem originated. I was in the hospital and no one had the presence of mind to turn my comp off, so it just sat there for two weeks straight. So far I've done a system restore to the day before my hiatus, defraged, and done a full system scan with AVG. CPU is running at 50% right now, and I've had it run at 66% or higher with no problems. Any ideas? Thanks guys

Edito: Also, yesterday, I was having some real scary crashes. The comp would freeze up and I'd get the blue screen of death ("dumping physical memory" jargon like that). This was before the sysrestore and defrag and haven't had THAT problem again thankfully.

[j35us]

The best place to begin checking is the taskbar, see how many programs are running silently. You said you use iTunes, that means at least quicktime is probably running 24/7, but all of your antivirus programs and anything else. The Startup menu in the Start menu (listed under programs) is another good place to look, it shows you what is being loaded into ram every time you boot your computer (besides all the necessary things windows loads). As for the crash problem, it is probably from the same roots as the other problem you have. Depending on how much ram you have, your computer may not have enough space to process all the information it's being told to use. Sadly, i can't really verify my opinions without seeing the computer myself though. Good Luck.