Let's be absolutely clear on this:

The "Failed to find valid synch" message is a NORMAL status message and does not indicate a problem. EVERYONE gets that message, and no one else has the skips you describe. So the message has nothing to do with the skips.

Now, let's get on with diagnosing the actual problem, which is the skips.

- Does it happen both at home and in the car?

- Is your EQ set flat (there were some one-channel bugs in the EQ) ?

- Do you get any other error messages besides the one we've already determined is unrelated?