The Mother Of All Stuttering Issues?

[MalachiAD]

SORRY IF I HAVE POSTED THIS IN THE WRONG AREA, BUT IF I HAVE, PLEASE MOVE IT AND DO NOT DELETE IT. THIS IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM I CANNOT SEEM TO SOLVE.

Ok, I've been all over the place trying to describe my problem to people, and getting a "I don't know what's wrong!?" type of response. Now, before I describe to you my issue here, let me just say that I'm not the least bit computer illiterate. However, this issue has overwhelmed me and I have tried everything to get rid of it, so I'm hoping you guys can help me out. ^_^;

SPECS:
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.2ghz
ASRock K8UPgrade Mobo (4x/8x AGP | 2gb Max)
Realtek AC'97 7.1 16-bit On-Board Sound
30GB Quantum Fireball
1GB (2x 512) PC3200 RAM
64MB Xtasy nVidia GeForce4 420mx (4x/8x AGP) (512MB nVidia Arrives Tomorrow.)
Running Windows XP Pro (SP2)
480watt Blue LED, Chrome "Demon 480" Power Supply

The Damn Issue:
Whenever I start up ANY game with the exception of Unreal 1 (I love classics) - The game will run fine like it should for about 20-40 seconds, and then it will begin to stutter as if I were running the game on a 220mhz Pentium MX Pro. Its not a fast-pace stutter either, its like "Move 5fps every two seconds" type of deal. Unreal Tournament 2004 seems to do it after being on the title screen for about 5 seconds or so, while UT:GOTY and others take the 20-40 seconds before it happens. I have also noticed that I have six SVCHost processes running at once, but a lot of people have told me thats normal, but it was not like that before. Anyway, here is what I have done to try and fix it, to no avail:

-Defragged PC Completely
-Ran Norton Antivirus 2005
-Tried Different Cards: PNY Geforce2 (4x AGP), 3DFX Voodoo4 4500 (PCI)
-Reinstalled the games
-Updated to Service Pack 2
-Upgraded BIOS
-Checked for Driver Conflicts
-Opened My Machine and tested memory, and other memory.
-Ran Diagnostics on my Harddrive
-Freed Up Space (I have 14 gb free)
-Tried switching Power Profiles in Device Manager
-Ran Fully Updated Ad-Aware
-Ran Fully Updated Spybot
-PC was initially up to date on blockage with SpywareBlaster
-Disabled Norton Antivirus/Internet Security 2005
-Fully Updated All Video Drivers.

So being defeated and after trying all I can posibly think of, searching through the web, and so on so forth, I end up here. Can anyone help me? This problem is seriously screwed up. (Also note, that I only scan for Spyware every six months, and rarely turn up with any at all, so I keep it pretty secure.) - I've also heard of other problems between XP Pro and the Athlon 64 series processor, but I couldn't find in-depth information on that.

Thanx, to any who at least try.

EDIT: Also, I should note that these were games that would run extremely smooth without so much as even a twitch of lag offline. This problem just started recently.

 

[MalachiAD]

Sorry to double-post, but I also wanted to point out that the temperatures inside the PC are optimum. The motherboard stays 90f, the CPU stays 98, theres seven fans in there + Arctic Silver 5.

 

[flashmonkey]

This happened to me with CS:S and America's Army, but it was only in game when my graphics card was under load. I had overclocked my Geforce 5200, and once I set it back to default speeds, the suttering went away. So if you have overclocked your card, which I expect you have with a Geforce 4 to play UT2004, set the card back to the default speeds and see what happens.

 

[MalachiAD]

Actually, I haven't overclocked it at all. I've been using this card only to get me by until I get my new one. I've turned off fastwrite, upped the size apature, and done other various things to see if it would fix it.

Thanx for the quick reply.

 

[MalachiAD]

Sorry for once again double posting >.<
...but now I have just noticed that my sound doesn't stutter along with this problem when it happens, but it does cut out or garble up every so often while its going on. Also, when I import music into Wavepad it plays an extremely fast and garbled up version of the song loaded over a good version of it. Could this problem possibly be related to my Realtek AC'97 drivers? (I ask because its one of the few things on my Device Manager that I cannot remove or uninstall drivers for.) - The other day I had to reset the output device that Winamp was using too, but I thought nothing of it at the time.

When I play videos or music on winamp, it runs fine for hours though.

 

[Didou]

Do you have a Ram "defragmenter" or such an application running at the same time ?

 

[MalachiAD]

Nope, but I have ran all those since this problem happened. The last thing I think I installed was Teamspeak 2 before this problem started occuring.

Here's a screenshot of my Processes: http://www.audiodragon.net/hotlinkers/MalTaskManager.jpg

 

[MalachiAD]

*BUMP* Sorry to sound like a pain in the ***, but this forum is my last chance at fixing this because I have been everywhere else. Since my machine is a custom build, I can't really call any technical support...and I haven't found any other site with this kind of support to members.

I need replies, as many as you can give. ^_^;

 

[Didou]

Have you tried killing a few "optional" services before launching the games ?

 

[MalachiAD]

Yep, but my PC usage is under 10% even when the games run. Its normally at 4% with no games running.

I'm backing up my files right now, going to send them to my secondary machine incase I have to format this one. (The other machine has a small 4GB Slave HDD I use specifically for backing up files.)

 

[Didou]

I've had a similar problem once with the game XIII. It turns out it was cool'n'quiet which kept lowering the CPU speed in the middle of the game. Is it enabled on your system ?

 

[MalachiAD]

Well, Cool N' Quiet was on, and I just clicked it off. I ran UT:GOTYE and it did run a little smoother for a little, but it still does it just as bad, it just took longer to happen now. I still find it odd that Unreal 1 is the only game not doing it. The most its getting is just a little bit of lag every minute or two, but its not enough to effect fast gameplay.

 

[MalachiAD]

*REBUMP* :knock:

 

[MalachiAD]

Ok, I just formatted my Harddrive the other day. There is no possible way to fix that problem apparently because I tried everything, and only a couple people bothered to help me here. I thank those two, but anyone else who reads this may find somewhere else more helpful.

So here's what I did: a 4GB HDD in as the master, made my 30GB a slave, moved all my back-ups between the two harddrives, then I formatted the 4GB and put windows on it (ONLY WINDOWS) while I partitioned my 30GB Slave HDD (without windows on it). So I'm just installing and storing all my files on the 30GB, while the 4GB runs windows only. It loads up just as fast as it should, and I got rid of the stutter issue. This will help me assure that if Win XP Pro screws up again, I won't have to go through so much backing-up.

 

[flashmonkey]

Good News: You fixed it.

Bad News: You had to go to the extreme. :hotouch:

 

[ChineseTechie]

Malachi,

I get reply pretty quickly... I think it's just that you said you have tried everything and the things that you tried is what we were going to suggest. Then why bother posting and repeat what you have said?? But it's good that you have solve your problem though... I should do what you have done and only run window on the master and save everything in the slave.

cT

 

[MalachiAD]

The only thing thats kinda irritating about running Windows on such a small HDD, is that I have to have EVERYTHING pretty much download to the 30GB because of the limited space. For anyone else who trys this, I'd reccomend using at least a 10GB for the Windows Master HDD, so that the temp files don't fill up as quickly.