So, long story short, I decided that if the DVD is the problem, then I would just take it out. The solution was to download a ‘no-dvd crack.’ Well, I didn’t want to do that because a) I’m afraid of viruses, and b) I don’t want to support anything that is even remotely linked to piracy.
I did as much research as I could stomach and found that the problem lay in the DRM. It got a little annoying doing this every time I arrived at a stash area, entered a town, or arrived at a yellow dot for a quest to ensue. This would force things to spawn correctly. Basically, I had two options to have things spawn correctly: either wait a few minutes or save my game and then reload last save. I beat Call of Pripyat last night after many problems with NPCs, items, artifacts, and quests not spawning correctly. I found this post on the official forums:
In re my issues with non-spawning NPCs, odd cutscenes, etc.
