Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights, collected by NWVault (http://nwvault.ign.com). Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Brian Chung, Technical Artist</font>

Game will slow down and then return to normal speed after a little bit (http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewpost.html?topic=572936&post=5126323&forum=49&highlight=)
Yes, check the background processes. I used to run this util that worked in mIRC and it would check things like CPU load and fan speed and CPU temperature.

Turns out a periodic pause when playing Counter-Strike was a result of the temperature checker, as it halted the whole system when it polled the sensor. Removing that plugin from mIRC fixed the pauses.

As always, work from minimal running apps, and reenable them one at a time to narrow down the culprit. Heck, it could be a virus scanner.