thanks for the kind words and encouragement...I have a tidbit for all who are in need...The is a corrupted file in a recent windows media player update...it's causing ALL media players to lag and emit a loud buzzing sound while playing media...it eventually crashed my OS and so I looked everywhere and everyone seemed clueless like me...well i researched it in my pc and discovered when it started, i deleted WMP and WMC and now my VLC and cometplayer/tigerplayer work fine...i did NOT reload either windows product...it's fine , no problems, everything works great now...hope this helps someone