Well you have a problem right now (for sure) but I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Right now we do not know if this problem is caused by either hardware or software. The age old "it used to work fine" really doesn't apply in electronics, especially since as they age their individual component tolerances change. The same is true of software, as I expect your Windows isn't running with a RAM Overlay on it, meaning that it too has changed in little ways that are impossible to know exactly. So we already know that Windows 7 does make changes to audio levels by itself in some way, as you have seen with multiple audio sources, and as experienced by me and others. So far none of us has determined a particular method of disabling this other than using another operating system. So in order to fully test your system you will need to try a different source to see if it is a problem with the software or the hardware. If you have another hard drive and can install XP on it with drivers, etc and try to duplicate the sound dropping problem. If you do not have an XP to install, you could probably get away with using the Windows Embedded Standard 2009 Trial. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/downloads/windows-embedded-downloads.aspx Or I suppose you could even install Linux and attempt to recreate the behaviour.