Thanks K.C. for that. I've uninstalled just about everything from the computer, loads & loads of software & all external hardware, to try and isolate & detect the cause. It's still the same! I'm not an expert with computers & can get "stuck" on what would be a simple thing for a person "in the know". I'm going to try two more things before i wipe the thing clean & start from scratch & hope you can advise me. 1. I tried to uninstall Outlook Express yesterday & with all the warnings it gave me, i declined. Would it be ok. to uninstall Outlook Express? 2. I have the Motherboard Utilities CD with a service pack for all the drivers & other things i don't understand. How do i go about uninstalling drivers, then reinstalling them from the disk? Do i delete ALL DRIVERS from Device Manager then put in the disk, do i have to boot from the disk or just bang it in? There have been trojans, dialers, viruses, worms, adware & spyware detected & completely removed a couple of months ago & the puter is completely cured from "baddies", but just wondering if this has resulted in damage or corrupt drivers or whatever? One more clue........the "sound manager" icon on the task-bar appears & disappears at will, the "start-up" sound is scratchy too. When asking the puter to do 2 things at once its as slow as a pack horse, but then if i close both things then do them again, then everythings normal & low CPU usage. Then, for example, if i then open 2 entirely different programs then it takes 1 minute for the 2nd program to open with hardware interrupts & 100% CPU usage. Yet, close these programs & then open them again (& it doesn't have to be EXACTLY the same things, just similar, within the same applications), then evrything is lightening fast & about 7% CPU usage. Then, if i went back to the original 2 programs it now seems as though the puter has forgotten how to open 2 programs it opened 2 mins earlier, & it's so slow at responding (the 1st time) that i get the "send error" report, this program is not responding etc. Thanks again K.C.
