Recently encountered an issue this year, wherein certain games take too long to load; sound drops out in-game occasionally/SFX playing is delayed; require me to end the game's task in Task Manager and only then be able to actually start it; certain things, such as sounds and the game overall, will stutter - sometimes until I restart the game; etc.

To fix these issues, I essentially have to keep restarting the game until it starts working properly, but even then, that's not a guarantee; it's like I have to get lucky in order for the game to work as it did before.


This is on Windows 7, and the games in question are Hitman: Blood Money and Dark Messiah. I haven't experienced some of these issues with some other 3D games, like Impulsion, DUSK and Condemned 1, and none of them for 2D games like Volgarr the Viking.



Any ideas/suggestions would be a big help. Thanks.