I noticed about a month ago that every single Game Maker game I play has a periodic lag or hitch every 2-3 seconds where everything pauses for a split second. In other words, if I slowly move my mouse across the screen it will stop briefly every couple of seconds. It's not a general lag issue but a specific glitch.

I've tried 10 or 15 different Game Maker games and they all have this problem, even ones that I know were okay a few months ago. It seems like there must be some sort of driver/DLL/resident program issue on my computer. I was curious if anyone has seen this before or has some advice.

I've tried going to old ATI video card drivers but no change in the problem.

It's been suggested that I provide some information about my computer, but I didn't bother the first time around because it's kind of like finding a needle in a haystack. My question is less "what's wrong with my computer" and more "has anybody seen this with Game Maker before?" Because if not, I'm probably out of luck. If there is a better forum for this, let me know.

For the record, I am using a Core 2 Duo, Windows XP, ATI 4850, Realtek onboard audio, no resident anti virus. Latest video and audio drivers. Absolutely none of this changed in the last month when the problem started. I first noticed it when I downloaded Beacon from Ludum Dare 15. It's a Game Maker game.

Interesting update: the problem persists even in the YoYo Games plugin! I also downloaded a few games from 2007 and they have the same hitchy lag.

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Well Instant play basically just downloads the game to a folder in you documents anyway, it is the same thing as just downloading it only simplified for casual users.

Are you ready for this blast from the past? It was a hardware conflict!

I play a lot of old games and have an Aureal3D sound card installed in my system so I can use the gameport for my force feedback joystick. Tracked the glitch down to the Plug and Play service using msconfig, and thought of that instantly. Should've thought that the first thing, but it's been 10 years since I've had to worry about that kind of problem!!

It's crazy that I've probably played 50 games, retro and modern, since I installed the soundcard, all without a hitch (literally) except for Game Maker games. Anyway, hope this helps some random Internet denizen in the future.