Hi! is the issue specific to TR2? or do any other games do the same? for instance, I have that exact issue on my PC when playing Quake 2, but no other games seem to have it (or maybe I have not noticed it).

Maybe create an image of the CD, copy it to an SSD or RAM drive, then mount that image. That should get rid of the stutter due to the slow access time of the CD drive.

So I have reformatted a bunch of times and used different combination of drivers. I played without sound drivers installed. I tried multiple drives no difference. I played quake 2 and didn't seem to have any issues with that game. I think its just tomb raider 2 on my 98 machine. I put it in my xp machine no issues with the cdrom loading. Do I just need to lower my expectations is this just what to expect on an ata 33 dvd rom drive.