only option that works is using intel HD audio and it sounds terrible and really distorted and skippy and repeats hyper fast (even the windows vista startup sound is bad)

windows xp and windows 200 on the other hand both use the default option selected for sound card drivers and both of them work fine with it. no glitches with sound with high cpu usage even when watching youtube videos doesnt skip a single sample of data (if thats even possible anyways)

why does windows vista perform so badly? it shouldn't be sounding so terrible like that. i have way more than enough RAM and video memory.
4GB RAM
2GB video memory
(dunno what sound card but sounds fine on ubuntu 12.04 and in virtualbox it sounds fine in windows 2k and windows xp)
1.6Ghz Intel Atom dual core processor (it should be fine right?)
nvidia graphics card dunno what model exactly i cant tell
and thats about it...
hard drive is 178GB should be plenty right?

dont have virtualization support but it shouldn't make much of a difference right? i disabled a few features like m/e or whatever its called and the i/o output thingy.
can only set one processor to use for the virtual machine
why does my audio skip/distort in windows vista? i tried the other sound card drives in virtualbox but they weren't even detected in the virtual machine whatsoever so im stuck with intel HD audio (recognized as High Definition Audio Device in device manager)
im really confused on why this is happening

Try selecting the OSS Audio Driver in the Audio section of the Settings (the gear) before you start the virtual machine.

Hope this helps some.

i cant seem to find it

edit: oops i meant windows 2000

You can't find... what? The settings or the OSS driver selection?

When you start VirtualBox, you get a window where you can select the virtual machine you want to start; make sure that's highlighted.

At the top of that window icons, New, Settings, Start and Discard. Click the settings icon, then Audio, and you'll see a list with with a check box named "Enable Audio" (that should be selected), Host Audio Driver with a selection box where you should be able to select the "OSS Audio Driver" and another drop down where you can select the type of virtual audio card (you probably want Intel HD Audio there).

"1.6Ghz Intel Atom dual core processor"

This is the problem.

ok i found the driver but it doesnt make any difference.. in fact.. now i dont have any sound whatsoever coming from my virtual machine
sound works fine with pulse audio selected with windows xp (machine is dual boot because i somehow tried to upgrade windows xp to vista but left windows xp on there) but in windows vista its terribly horrible sounding D:

Did you install the extension pack when you installed VirtualBox? If not, you ought to do so (the extension pack helps a lot of things). You only install the extension pack once in the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager.

Also, did you install the guest additions in each virtual machine? You need to boot the Windows virtual machine(s) in safe mode to install the guest additions.

If you haven't done those you should; the instructions for both are in the user manual that was downloaded as part of the VirtualBox installation.

Hope this helps some.

yes i already installed guest additions but it made nearly zero difference all it did was make the mouse stop lagging but other than that i didnt notice anything different

edit: installed windows 7 had the same problem as windows vista but not even close to how bad vista was.. win 7 is way better and when listening to a song without anything else playing i get almost no clicking or skipping noises unless i click something or move the mouse around

i think my computer is too old for windows vista and 7 lol

For me the key to making either XP Professional or Win 7 audio clear is to *run a single cpu instance* of Windows. For XP 32 bit, I install with the I/O APIC emulation disabled; with W7 64 bit I make sure the instance is installed with only 1 CPU provisioned, I/O APIC is required AFAIK. I suspect this would work with Vista as well.

My host OS is Gentoo linux, with kernel 3.4.3, 64 bit. Vbox 4.1.16 . Platform is AMD Athlon II X2 at 3.66 Ghz. My sole purpose was to provision an instance with the minimum required to run Netflix, which requires DRM operability which AFAIK is only available in Silverlight for Windows, Mac, and perhaps Android now.

VBox Settings
-------------
XP Pro 32 bit:
ICH AC97 audio driver
512 Mb memory
No windows paging file.
32 Mb video. Once an instance is initialized, Vbox services are installed, the VM is shutdown. 2D and 3D acceleration are enabled, then the VM can be restarted and otherwise configured.

Win7 Home, Pro 64 bit:
Intel HD audio driver
768 to 1024 Mb Memory. Start with at least 1024, I installed with 1536.
No windows paging file.
40 Mb video. Same as XP on 2D/3D enablement.

I disable all the Windows services I can. Your running services may require more memory. Audio was still clear with installation services of windows, I just like to run lean, fewer threads and processes are fewer events/less resources.

The result is no audio breakup, crackle, sizzle, "echoing" of a single sample sent to the sound card, etc. It *just sounds better*. The problems were present with all multi CPU installs of Windows, even when provisioned with one CPU, although less so. MS Silverlight has to be removed and reinstalled if you change the number of CPUs.

System resources and CPU utilization used are lower with the single CPU guest instance overall and the interrupt rate is halved. On my dual core box, the linux kernel threads of Vbox migrate to one core and the user level to the other. Overall, average system cpu utilization on an otherwise mostly idle system while watching a video is about 45+%/25+%/3% sys/user/irq with either Windows. The Task Manager in either Windows shows about 50% utilization.

The sound seems a bit better on Win7. Both have a low audio output level vs linux sources ( e.g. Hulu desktop ), about 20db lower. XP sound is quite acceptable, I don't notice much difference except on music content.

Your mileage may vary. Good luck should you try this.