DWM - Seems to be causing Problems

I've been using Vista for several years now and contrary to all of the
complaints, I've been very satisfied with it. Maybe it's because I've
always had the UAC control switched off I don't know but for me it has
performed very well. However, several weeks ago I started experiencing
problems when listening to XM Radio which I usually have tuned in throughout
the day. The problem is that it has started getting these delays and the
sound sounded like machine gun bursts. At first I thought it was my network
provider but recently decided it was my machine when I was playing a DVD and
and the sound was doing the same thing.

Today, I noticed that every time the sound would get this distortion with
delays, the program I was working in would seem to pause as I was typing.
Now, I think most of the the problem is the Desktop Window Manager
(dwm.exe). I terminated it in the process manager and for the most part
these delays have stopped. Sometimes there amy be a slight delay but for
the most part it doesn't seem to happen with dwm terminated.

I have a 2 gb machine with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200
2.21. ghz.

Why would this all of a sudden start occuring? I suspect something else is
the root of the cause but what and how can I determine what it may be. I
know that dwm is a resource hog but I'm just wondering why it would all of a
sudden start failing.


Thanks,

Vic