[Maplicito]

I APPEAR to have solved the problem. I went into the hard drive's settings in Device Manager - Write Caching was already enabled, but Advanced Performance was not. I enabled this, and then stressed the system. How I have been doing this is to get Vista to update the Windows Experience Index as this can push all 4 cores simultaneously to a 90%+ load. This time around, after updating the WEI three times, no skips that I could notice.

I don't like the idea of using an option only recommended for use with a backup power supply - but I'm probably just being overly paranoid.

So - if there are any other relevant, or better ideas, I'd love to hear them - but I think for all intents and purposes, barring any more skipping showing up, the problem is solved.

Thanks again for the patience and help!