gzonked

Hi all: 2 questions for the price of one. 1. I have a file called *.cpio.gz and it refuses to open with any command (tar -xzvf et al, gunzip etc) and claims it is not a gzip file? Any other commands? 2. My sound card has recently developed a 10Hz (guess) chesty cough. Every minute or so it emits a rasping tone as if it is picking up some clock cycle from the PC. The machine is dual boot and does not do this in the hated doze? I have reinstalled the sound driver to no avail. Anyone else had a similar thing? Paul