Hmm...I did a search and came up with someone mentioning to have DMA enabled on the drive, so I will check that in the morning, though I don't think that's the case. I'm also not sure which direct x I have installed on there...Wish he'd mentioned what patch he had used >< Since that config is close to what I have.
UPDATE: for those of you who have FFVIII fully installed on your machine but are getting stuttering and pauses every new scene of music and video, I have found the solution, thanks to another thread
here.
Though all my cd/dvd drives already had DMA enabled, my harddisk did NOT. I enabled it, restarted, and it worked just fine. It's lovely now and I'm going to replay what I did yesterday now that I'm happy with it.
AHHHHHHHHH i solved it!!! i was installing Samuel Slight's DLS from http://aaronserv.dyndns.org/hosting/ffsf/download_8.html , and i quote from the readme:
5. If your disk and/or cd-rom support DMA (try this to see if it does), enable it :
a) right-click on "My Computer" then "Properties"
b) click on "Device Manager" tab
c) double-click on "Disk drives" then double-click on your drive
d) click on "Settings" tab
e) if DMA is not checked, check it then click "OK".
f) before closing "System Properties", repeat step b) to e) for other drives
and cd-rom that you may have.
g) after clicking "OK" on "System Properties" window, your computer will restart.
If your drive support DMA, it will remain checked.
Note: By doing so, FF8 will no longer hesitate after moving from scene to scene.
And also it improves a lot your drive performance in any case.
YES!!!!! this after years of tolerating the annoying pauses from scene to scene!
EDIT again: Oi vey, I just keep finding them. I did wonder at one point if my game was going to crash every time I got in a random battle, but it was just Rinoa down in the sewers it did that on. However, my big problem is with the fmvs. It does not matter if they're on high or low-res, I get the same result. First, before I did the above that solved the pausing, my game would crash if I had them on high-res. But since I put on DMA for my HD, I thought I should try to play the fmvs.
However, the video gives major video corruption, so bad that even in the in-game text the graphics are corrupted and I can't even read it. Think of it like this: dvds are interlaced and have two fields of top and bottom. Taking that analogy and apply it to the fmvs (even though I doubt their interlaced). It's like one of the fields of video got stuck while the rest continues and the video stutters its way through, though the sound is fine.
I will try to get a screenshot for you.