The stutters are back....grrr!!

[Tako_Kichi]

I have been stutter free on FSX for over a year but recently they seem to have come back and I can't get rid of them. I have tried updating video drivers, reset nHancer as per Nick N's instructions, gave up on that and tried Jesus Altuve's suggestions but they didn't work either so went back to Nick's setup. I've tried 'Texture_max_load' at everything from 10 to 250 (in small...ish increments) but I'm still getting micro-stutters both in VC and external view that last for maybe .25 of a second and occur every 15-20 seconds or so especially if I am looking around with TIR5.

Apart from the video driver update the only major thing I have changed is to add some of the REX Overdrive textures but as I am still getting 30 FPS I don't think they are the cause.

System is as follows:
OS: XP Pro (32 bit) + SP3
Mobo: MSI P7SLI Platinum
CPU: E8400 (no OC)
GPU: nVidia 8800GT (512 Mb)
RAM: 4 Gb DDR2-800 (5-5-5-15)

I have also turned off file indexing on the partition that has FSX installed on it.

Anyone have any suggestions I can try to get rid of the micro-stutters?

[stansdds]

Since your FSX was stutter free and now it isn't, I would suspect a change in software. Maybe it is those new textures. Maybe there is something running in the background. Have you added any new software recently, such as Adobe products, portable GPS software, or anything else that self-updates via the internet?

[gigabyte]

Autoupdaters are a PITA and can cause stutters for sure, I have an Icon in the control Panel that is called "Software Update" no specific app is listed just "Software"? I had problems with numerous apps boging down FSX included until I disabled that, I finally removed it completely and it really helped performance overall.

The other thing I have found particularly with stutters is the HD itself most of the time (in my experience anyway) the cause of stuters is a disk operation. Read / Write operations such as loading autogen or scenery, checking for updates for anything, especially A/V software. The other possibility is fragmentation which I am sure you probably stay on top of, but if you are relying on just scheduled defrag it may not be doing as good a job as it can, what I do is once a month or so I do a reboot and run the clean up and defrag from safe mode, that way there is a min of apps running and it can do a much better job.