A22e Audio Playback

[jecoled]

I've been converting old cassette tapes for CD Burning via Nero Wave Editor. Since updating to XP from 98SE, the recordings on the HDD include intermittent distortions (each track has at least one brief instant of static or a hiccup). Playing recorded tracks on Windows Media Player lessens the distortions, but doesn't eliminate them. No evidence of distortions or noise shows up on the wave editor display. I turned off virus scan and defraggged the HDD and have the latest hardware and software drivers, but the problem persists. Could this be an aging HDD problem? Any ideas?