inspiron 1420 - choppy audio (tried the workarounds already)

Hi, I'm new to the form and I'm going crazy with this issue I have.

I have an Inspiron 1420 with the nVidia 8400 video card and the sigma tel audio.

I put win 7 on it a long while ago and all was fine in my world until recently when the audio started getting choppy/stuttery. If I played music, watched a video, etc...the adio would stutter every few seconds. the video would be fine, but the audio drives me insane.

I've tried rolling back any updates, tried system restore, looked through the workaround section on this site, deleted and reinstalled drivers, even did a fresh install of win 7 and NOTHING seems to fix the problem, it's jst as annoying as ever.

If anyone could help me solve this problem, I would be eternally grateful.