Hi, I recently had to reinstall Windows and have everything updated. My problem is that every time I close out a program, almost any program (ie. Firefox, Windows Defrag, Msconfig, etc.), and I go to click on anything like the Start button or an icon then Windows will "hang" for a few seconds before it will load it. It's almost like it's taking it extra time to close out the previous program which this didn't happen in the past(before I had to reinstall and a little after reinstalled Windows). It just started happening the past few days. I tried to restore my computer to when I thought it wasn't doing this, however it said my computer could not be restored. And the one point it did let me restore it to didn't help. I've ran anti virus/spyware programs and Cccleaner so my system should be clean. I've also defragemented and ran Check disk. As far as the game goes, it(the game) will slow down and become "choppy" for a few seconds every minute or so as if I have some other CPU hogging process running but I don't. I do have some of my hardware over clocked but I know that this isn't the issue as it's been this way for quite a while and runs stable under Prime95. Hopefully I explained this clear enough.. I try to keep my computer clean of junk so I have no idea what might be causing this. Does anyone have any ideas? Your advice and suggestions would be appreciated. Let me know if you need any logs or other info. Thanks. --------------------------- AMD 64 4000+ @ 2.75Ghz | EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra MB| 2GB G.Skill @ 458 | 400GB 1x320Gb Sata 3.0Gbps 1x80Gb Sata 1.5Gbps | ATI X850XT 256MB @545Mhz/1200GHz | 500W Earthwatts PSU | Windows XP Home (32-bit) SP3

Did you install the motherboard chipset drivers?

Hi OtheHill, thanks for the reply. Yeah, I installed the lastest motherboard chipset drivers. I didn't have them installed and installing them was actually one of my attempts to fix the problem. Unfortunately no luck.

Are you running an IDE or SATA drive? If IDE verify the drive is running in DMA mode. If SATA run a speed test. Both can be verified from within Device Manager.

I'm running a SATA II (300Gbps) drive. I ran a speed test on it and the results were: Theretical limit: 300.0 Burst speed: 163.5 Sustained speed: 72.3 Do those numbers sound right?

Yea, that sounds about right. Try running a registry cleaner. CCleaner is excellent for cleaning up temp files and also has a decent registry module.

Well I Ccleaner surprisingly removed a bunch of junk from the registry that I didn't think was there since I usually use Tweaknow Reg cleaner for that but unfortunately it didn't help. However, I did get to investigating some of the processes I had running and I think I found the culprit. I disabled ctfmon.exe and the "hang" that was happening when closing windows or programs seems to be gone. (knock on wood) I haven't tried the game out yet so I don't know if this fixed that issue but will let you know if it has when I do test it out. Hopefully that's all it was but I'll let you know if it wasn't. Thanks for your time/help.