stuttering screen while driving

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been fighting an intermittent problem with rFactor.  The first time I noticed it was mid weekat Interlagos, and the problem is that while driving, the display would stutter a little.  Sometimes it would be a little blip, and sometimes it would be more serious - like the screen would freeze for a good part of a second and then you'd be back - 200 meters down the line - through a turn!  It's like the machine is having a T.I.A. (mini-stroke)!

This issue would manifest itself while either on the multiplayer track or on the single player track and I did find a fix: pull the plug on my DSL modem!

So, thinking that something is phoning home that's not authorized to, I went through a severe cleanup, found a couple of issues - some minor malware, and the following days I've had no problem.  The race at Interlagos was fine, and I didn't experience this problem at all during our week in Mexico.

Well, it was back the night before and also with a vengence last night and it got so bad the game was unplayable while connected to the internet.

The previous night I chose to throw on a software firewall to monitor the outgoing connections to see if I can catch and kill anything that's talking when it shouldn't.-  COMODO

As well, my normal protocol before starting rfactor is to use EndItAll to kill a bunch of little things running, and then I stop a bunch of services to minimize the system overhead.  There has been nothing I have done that has changed that I can think of in terms of the system, or rfactor (like a plugin) that could explain this.  I run an Intel Core II duo machine with 2 gig ram, Win XP Pro.

Is it possible rfactor itself is the cause?  Network traffic mid-week?

Has anybody else had issues of this nature and does anybody know the fix?  This is a real threat to my ability to continue to play rfactor online, and frankly I'm quite concerned.

Thanks in advance.

Sounds like there is something on your system taking I/O and/or CPU during the race (possibly..there are other things as well).

Set rfactor to a higher priority (high) and see if you get the same issue. Also check for background low CPU processess that eat disk I/O as well.

Both done through the Windows Task Manager, eh?

Do people ususally disable their antivirus apps when using MP or not?

I just had the same thing start on me a few races ago. HR was really bad. The fix for me has been restarting my computer and opening nothing except RF and TS. What worries me is the fact that I used to run Firefox with tons of tabs open, AIM and YIM, uTorrent(ima pirate , and blasting rap music all while doing laps on the server, with none of this lag present. I cant think of anything Ive done to cause this, but Id really like to know what I can do to solve this problem., its made me think twice about doing laps and has cut down on my practice time. Im gonna try to give more priority to RF and see what happens, but any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.