Hey there, thanks for the reply! After some tinkering around, inspired by your response, I managed to fix my problem! Thank you so much, it’s such a relief to finally move past this!
So here’s what I did and to answer your questions:
I was having the hitching issue on 4.24 and 4.25 but not on 4.21
I did verify the engine files for 4.24
While I was doing that, I also went through my task manager and then my privacy settings disabling everything and anything that could be running in the background. I updated every single setting I could find for automatic updates or anything of that nature.
Once the verification was done, I redid my hitch test and the hitch was gone! It was also gone for 4.25 so I don’t believe the verification was the issue but it was something running in the background that got turned off.
That being said, again, thanks for the help and hopefully this might help someone else in the future!