Game and movies pausing and stuttering

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.video (More info?)

I have been having an extremely annoying problem for quite
some time. I have a P4 1.7GHz w/ nVidia Gforce2 MX400
video. I have updated to all of the latest patches,
drivers, etc.

The playback for movies and graphics games have a
consistant pausing problem. It will work fine for a short
time and then it will pause with a stuttering action in the
movie/game for 35 seconds and then it will work fine for 35
seconds when the pausing/stuttering starts again for 35
seconds. This started happening after routinely installing
a Windows Update patch over a year ago but I can't verify
that the update caused the problem because uninstalling the
updates doesn't clear up the problem.

I have looked in the event logs to see if something is
kicking in every 35 seconds but nothing appears to be a
problem. If I go into Task Manager, either Explorer,
svchost, or taskmgr is running at 97 to 100 percent
utilization. I have gone through several troubleshooting
procedures from Microsoft involving stopping services,
unloading applications, drivers, you name it and cannot
clear up the problem.

After looking in many forums, it appears that I am not
alone in having this problem and also not alone in not
being able to resolve it. This appears to be an endemic
problem with Windows XP. It just starts happening and when
it does, you can't fix it. Replacing the video adapter
didn't help.

I am looking for some help here. I hope that someone can
steer me in the right direction.