Stuttering problems are usually always a case of something interfering with the games access to the HDD, or not having a multicore system.
The game streams in its content using a seperate thread, and if something is delaying/occassionaly blocking the streaming (or there is no such thread available to the system, or something else is using the thread), then you will have stuttering as necessary data is loaded in too late. The game then starts resolving to all kinds of emergency systems, leading to degraded graphics quality and performance.
In our office, streaming problems are usually related to the virus scanners or other "resident" applications, and when we switch them off, the streaming problems disappear. Fragmented HDD's are another cause as is running some other application in the background that takes up performance.
In my case, I'm pretty sure that none of the above apply. My crate (Dual Core E6850) is a 100% gaming machine, Vista is tweaked down to the barest necessities (UAC turned of, most services shut down, everything turned off not absolutely needed for a single user, gaming only PC).
There are definitley no applications running (except for NHancer), turning Avast off didn't change a thing.
The page file is minimized, the registry cleaned out, all drivers recent - the usuals.
Everything that was running before, while unplayable on partition D:, is still running now (mainly Logitech mouse and keyboard drivers and Avast) and not hindering performance any more...
Installing on drive C: was definitely the
only change I made and the game has been running perfectly, with not a single crash or hiccup for more than 15 hours now...
I had the same phenomenon with Drakensang, btw, also by Dtp - which might use the same copy protection?
