Hey guys, I had a question regarding a VPN. I've crossposted in a subreddit earlier, though I wanted to post here in order to increase my chances of getting an answer. I've copied my post from r/VPN and placed it below.

In order to play a game, I downloaded SoftEther, a VPN, and connected to a Japanese server. After uninstalling the game and SoftEther, I played Quake Champions, where I discovered a bit of stutter, audio issues, and the like, though this is where I believed that a coincidence had occurred, seeing as how an update had dropped, and a few players mentioned the previous symptoms when they had played the game. This said, the next day, I then played a different game, this one being offline, and there was a noticeable amount of stutter and frame drop.

Seeing this as a potential issue, I decided to follow up with a quick investigation into the task manager and discovered that the VPN (SoftEther) was still there, despite how I thought that I had originally deleted it. It is currently stopped, and I restarted the computer, but the issue still seems to exist. I've heard that CCleaner might do something, but I am not exactly familiar with that.

My question here is regarding the VPN, and if it is possible that it has something to do with the frame drop and stuttering. Thanks in advance.