DS3l (p35) woes :(

so i finally got all my wonderful christmas presents put into one amazing awesomeness rig. (q6600,ds3l,hd3870,2gbOCZram). vista ultimate 32bit, everything installs fine including my audigy 2 card. i go to install orange box and my internet wont connect (it was working fine at my parents but at school you have to connect through an 8021x connection). well my laptop connects fine and has vista, so im like wth. i go and buy a usb wireless and it works fine, even automatically connects *you are supposed to set it all up manually on the shcool server, that surprised me* alright orange box is installed, im playing and the sound starts skitzing out on me. every 30 seconds or so it stutters and kills my FPS. so i switch from the audigy card and hook up to the onboard audio, same issue to no avail. i can even hear it every once in a while on my aim when someone logs in (although for some reason it doesnt do it for movies).

anyways long story short...does anybody know how to get rid of the stuttering issue? and what can i do short of keeping this stupid 50 dollar usb to get my internet running again?

well i seem to have fixed the stuttering problem by setting failsafe defaults in bios and updating the marvell NIC drivers...as much sense as that makes...lol... i actually dont think resetting the mobo actually did anything though, ill have to check...

as for the wireless card, its still blinking at me, driving me nuts....one battle at a time....im about to go grab a spare pci card from my parents hosue and see if it works :/