This problem seemed to creep up out of nowhere. Never really had an issue with stutters before. Even now the sim runs smooth as silk no matter what clouds, weather, AI, scenery I throw at it. Been very lucky.Now whenever I minimize FS2004 or "pause" and minimize, the instant I go back to playing I get a repetitive small stutter. Just enough to notice and annoy me. Very consistent and rhythmic... like a fast waltz of 1-2-3, 1-2-3, it always stutters on the 1. I notice my HD LED light always pops on at the "1" as well. A connection maybe? But then again when every thing is running smooth before I minimize I see the HD LED working as well in the same matter.The only way I see to rid of the stutters is to re-start FS. Now as I begin my search through threads on the topic, does this particular issue ring a bell with anybody?thx

It seems like as soon as I write for help I seem to discover something new. Two things:1. I noticed after the stutters began they would slowly go away (after a minute or two?). Minimize again and bring it back up, the cycle would start all over.2. If I closed down my Virtual memory to 0 (paging files). The stutters went away! Ha-ha!So I changed all my virtual memory to zero (4 drives had virtual memory), re-booted to flush it out and then re-set one drive only to 4MB. Problem seems to have fanished. Don't know it was the combining all VM to just one drive or if the "flushing" helped. But something for others to consider if a similar issue arrives.