Falling Prey to the Stutter-Bug Out of the Blue

[svet-am]

First, let me state that I've owned Half-Life2 since it came out. I own the collector's DVD edition and that, in the past, it has ALWAYS worked just fine for me.

This past weekend, I finally got fed up with how crappy my computer was running and decided to do a reformat-reinstall of the OS and all my apps. Mind you, I do this on a fairly regular basis -- generally two to three times per year because I'm a developer and often find myself testing beta apps that have a tendency to muck things up.

Well, I re-install and get to the point of re-installing my games. I install Half-Life2, update Steam, and then set steam to the task of decrypting my game content and delivering the appopriate patches.

After all of that finally finishes, I decide to fire up HL2 and play for a little while. Thing is -- I can't the game stutters HORRIBLY throughout the experience. The GMan's speach is stuttered, gameplay, the whole works.

Here's a brief run-down of my rig:
AMD Athlon64 (s754) 3400+
ABit KV8-Pro
2x512MB PC3200 DDR
Promise SATAII150 PCI Sata controller
Western Digital WD1200JD SATA drive (120GB)
Western Digital WD800JD SATA drive (80GB)
eVGA nVidia GeForce 6800GT 256MB RAM (AGP)

Like I said, I do this whole re-install thing fairly regularly and this is the first time I've ever run into these problems. I tried uninstall and re-install but the problem is still there. Don't know if anyone can help (and don't really expect anyone to). But, I thought that if anyone from Valve happened to peruse these forums, they might be interested to see how my case of the stutter bug happened out of the clear blue.

 

[Beerdude26]

Here is a link to a possible fix : Link

 

[Flyingbig]

Svet i am the same, i haven't used the source engine in a couple of months but i updated my cpu so i decided to load up CS and DOD and generally its a very stuttery experience especially when i first load up the game but even though it goes away after a minute or so it still stutters every now and then through out the game. Never used to be this way.

Following that link now....

 

[Flyingbig]

That fix seems to work, ran DOD and CS there and they were pretty much perfect. HL2 still has minor stutter at the start but tbh it has always been there and happens at the same spots everytime for the last year and a half. Pretty happy atm.