Hi WyattEarp;
Does the sound bursts happen when MJ is minimized? Being minimized uses less memory.
How much memory does your system have?
1.7GHz machines were developed before Win XP came out & may not have enough memory. XP is a real memory hog. You need at least 256MHz of memory to effectivly run XP.
Do you have a lot of other programs running in the background? If so, & you are low on memory, it is possible that your processor may be loaded down with swap file work. When this happens, MJ does not get enough memory/processor cycles, & like any other program starts to skip which may sound like sound bursts.
Suggest you visit the following site
http://winramturbo.com/ & download "WinRam Turbo Free". It will tell you at a glance what is going on with system memory, processor & swap file use.
I use WinRam Turbo Free all the time. It has told me a lot about how my system is loaded down.
HAVE FUN!!