Vista - So i'm new to the whole recording thing

I have an HP laptop, not sure what the model is. And its running vista. I've been trying to record my guitar for awhile now using various different methods. Audacity recorder with line in, and mic. My webcam, the recorder on vista etc. And i get the same results every time. It sounds good for about 20 ish seconds, then massive quality drop and it gets skippy and staticy and just all around horrible. Any help would be appreciated.

Is it a recording or a playback problem?

Ah. Never thought bout that. It records the sound. But then on playback it gets brutally out of sync after a very uncertain amount of time. Sometime 20 seconds, sometimes like 3 seconds. It reallys effs up when I hit palm muted notes. If ya know what im talking about.

what is the filetype of the recording (.wmp, mp3, .wav or other).

Windows media audio/video

That's .wma and should not present any playback problems. It is a Windows standard. The problem must be during the the recording phase. Do you have options for the recording settings? If yes, set the bitrate to 128 Kbps.

the problems you are having are most likely a result of the DirectX or Wave MME audio the program is using to record and playback. Sound has to go through many layers of software before it is outputted through your speakers. Your crackling is probably a result of the buffer size in audacity being too low.

I would recommend finding a more featured program for recording. Cool Edit Pro, while it may be a bit old by now, is still pretty good for beginners if you just want to record some multi track sessions of yourself.

2nd, you may want to try using ASIO4All to eliminate your latency issues. It bypasses the standard windows drivers to give you very low latency. you can download it here: ASIO4ALL - Universal ASIO Driver

Downloaded the drivers, tried new recording software, still same problem

have you tried re-installing the drivers for your soundcard as well?