I will try the advice about spyware. I know I surf a lot on that computer, it may have something to do with it. I don't seem to have a problem with the sound card, but if i'm in spot view (or VC using the viewpoint bus) and pan around in a complete 360 circle, I get a stutter, fps will drop down to 1fps as well, but just for a second. As far as the sound card is concerned, I use the onboard AC97 on my Gigabyte mobo. I'll try and update the AC97 drivers, but I haven't had a problem with anything else, although the only things I use the computer for really are FS2K4 and Medal of Honor.

In case someone has similar problems: today my freeze-problem returned inspite having disabled the sound-card :-(I have done now two things: a) disabled the forces on my ff-joystick:( installed even newer drivers (45.23)for the Nvidia-card. AT THE MOMENT the problem seems to have disappeared again (I certainly won