Hello, new to LS and to the forum. I apologize if this is in the wrong forum--feel free to move or delete if that is the case.

Okay, on to the problem. I used LS for a couple days, really dug the Exeed theme, particularly. I could get used to this shell. However, I noticed that every 10 seconds or so, my cursor would turn to the hourglass animation for a split second. Didn't think much of it--until I tried playing games. It stutters for a second, which is incredibly annoying--and deadly, in multiplayer.

I investigated a bit. The stutter is consistent through all themes. It is svchost.exe, the one labelled SYSTEM and taking up around 25mb of RAM that spikes to about 90% CPU usage for a split second and then slowly returns to 00. It does this when Litestep is on, and when Litestep has been exited--however the problem does not persist when I restart with Explorer set as my shell.

I'm really loving Litestep, but, being the gamer I am, cannot continue using it. Any help is appreciated.

Check that the Media Type of your network card is set to whatever network speed you have (e.g. 100Mbps Full Duplex), and not the default Auto Select. The Auto Select setting is known to cause short freezes in games. This is only a suggestion though, it might be some other problem...

This is a general forum...just happens to mostly be general LS stuff.

The network card wasn't the problem. This is just killing me that I can't use LS. :(

What OS are you running?

Windows XP SP1. Athlon XP 3000+, 1gb RAM in case that might matter at all.

When I end svchost.exe, the stutter ends, but sound no longer works in games, and when I try Winamp it says "No DirectSound driver detected."

try a different theme

Try reinstalling DirectX. And check that your drive(s) are running in UDMA mode, not PIO mode.

and since it seems to be sound related, try updating your audio drivers.

IRQ Conflict between Audio and Another Device?

or maybe the drivers just became corrupted.

but if it only occurs with Litestep? ...

Only with Litestep. If I exit Litestep after I have booted up with it, the problem continues. The problem only goes away when I restart under Explorer.