Lag Spikes

I doubt that anyone has discovered anything. Not that many people have this, and those that do are either living with it or quit for a while hoping Nexon or someone else will find the answer.
The problem is not limited to any one version of windows. I have it on XP SP3, PhoenixWright has it on Windows 7.

The first hints of the problem were with the Aran update. http://www.southperry.net/showthread.php?t=18913
Some of the descriptions sound similar to what is happening now. At the time some were able to fix it by disabling Vsync somehow in their video card setups. I have an old ATI card, and don't have that option to try.
I have wasted a lot of time on this. I have disabled antivirus, firewall and everything else possible until task manager only showed 15 processes total, including itself and 'system idle process', but still had the freezeup every 15 seconds.
My guess is that some element of the game (perhaps hackshield) is waiting for some reply from the system, and the system is taking its sweet time responding. Meanwhile all other functions of the game are locked.
Can't use process explorer for clues, because hackshield thinks its a hack tool. I wonder if any hackers have the problem and if it goes away when they disable or bypass hackshield. It wouldn't be suprising if this problem (and many others) are an unfortunate side effect of Nexon's efforts to stop hackers.
Interesting that some WoW players had a similar problem a while back. In fact lag/freeze/stutter "every 15 seconds" seems to be a common problem to various games and programs in general.

Things I have yet to try:
Replace video card.
Upgrade memory from 1.5G to 2G
Disable audio or replace drivers.
Downgrade DIrect X to version 8
Remove router and link computer directly to internet modem.
Total delete and reinstall MS (Ugh, would take all day to redownload, and I doubt it would help).
Buy new hard drive, reinstall windows and everything else (would take ages, be better off just to...
Buy new computer (if unlucky, might have same problem right out of the box)
Quit

My memory is 3.0 so thats not it...
I have tried total delete and reinstall MS

a few things you can cross off your list