Now, I had this problem with Empire, supposedly as a result of the 'melee bug', which was cleared up by the modding community. Namely - that every fifteen seconds, everything on screen slows to a crawl and drags horribly for five to ten seconds, and then returns to normal.

As I say, on Empire, this was cleaned up as a problem for me, but it has returned for NTW. And bizzarely, I noticed that another of my games, Combat Mission; Shock Force (PLUG) came up the same when I played it for a bit yesterday. This would suggest it isn't game specific, but I have done all the usual: defrag, cleanup, uninstall defunct programs, upgraded to new drivers (and tried going back to old ones), provided more system punch in general, and still the problem remains. After my latest attempt I reset NTW's graphic settings via the automatic detection, and still the same problem (it also caused a nasty drag to the sounds and music also on that occasion).

For the purposes of those who know far more about me that computers, I have provided some relevant specs below, so any help much appreciated; it breaks my heart to see threads go unanswered! If more is necessary, I can provide that. Please lend a hand!

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+, MMX, 3D Bow (2CPUs)
Memory: 2048MB RAM
Direct X: 9.0c
NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT, 1024MB