[RandyMcCharles]

For my case I posted this issue on this board well over a year ago. It is on am XP notebook purchased from MTU. I disable pretty much everything except Hoster, including wireless. The stutter happens infrequently, perhaps once every 10 hours with everything disabled. More often if other applications are running. I suspect it is the audio system as every now and then it 'forgets' that the audio out is connected and asks me to reconfirm the connection. It may even be due to power fluctuations.
Because I can live with this I am waiting for a Hoster update I actually want before I try updating the OS and system drivers. (They are currently as installed by MTU.) I am happy with the Hoster version that came installed and haven't seen new features in recent releases that I need. (For a while there they were mostly fixes for Win 7, which I don't need.)