Gargoyle, I don't know what 50 pages would look like. I generally check the email, check into Mudcat, maybe click a link of two whilst I'm there, go to our equivalent of EBay,- it's called TradeMe- and check my saved searches. That is usually it. Two hours would be a long time for me. I do very little browsing. The only web problems that I've noticed is when on Youtube, sometimes (not often) the action freezes for a second or two.   Also, Her Indoors insists that both computers, mine and my son's, AND the broadband modem, are switched off at the wall socket every night. The switch definitely disconnects the phase of the socket.

As olddude suggests, I did a full scan through Windows Onecare. Nothing at all. No virus, no spyware. Just my compressed files. 5 hours of scanning. No ports open.   Clean Disk and Defrag not needed. No, I have no log program.

Mick and Gargoyle, I recorded Task Manager whilst I had Outlook Express up, that is the slowest program to load. CPU going to 100% for a second when it finally condescends to load, back down to 0-2% in the steady state. I'll PM you with a copy now. Chris.