Stuttering Sound, Slow Start up

HI.

Sound

I am using a toshiba satellite a50 laptop.
I recently installed a new 512 stick of ram. The sound on the laptop now stutters sometimes when another program is opening for example. It never did this before. The two stick of ram are different, one PC2100 one pc266, but i thought they were the same or at least compatible. What can i do, i am sort of assuming that the stuttering sound is indicative of something problematic with the ram setup?

Start up

I have done everything i can think of to speed up start up. defragged (using Perfectdisk) Run regcleaner and ccleaner. I have stopped all unneccessary processes. I have uninstalled all excess programs.

My problem is, i am always installing stuff. Audio programs, system utilities mainly. I always use the add remove programs utility to remove them. However i am worried that it is still the cause of the problems.

I am considering a fresh windows install, but i want to transfer some programs, like sonic stage to the second hddin the laptop. Will they be recognised/registered correctly with windows. I think there is a utility with partition magic for moving applications from one drive to another, should i use that?
Will a repair installation work?
Is there any other way to get start up times back to normal?

Have you tried removing the new stick of memory to see if the computer works as it should, you can also try removing both sticks and and replace one at a time to see which is not compatable.

Thank you. I am not only hoping for practical suggestions like yours, but hoping to understand the nature of the problem.

Try running CCleaner (it's free) just to tidy up the system and registry. Then defragment and see if that helps.

Also check if all your drivers are up-to-date and do a scan for spyware/viruses.

run memtest test 5 overnight on each stick and then both together.