Hi asomormridle, Probably the anti virus software. I use adaware by Lavasoft. It doesn't hurt the computer or do anything strange. There's a free 10th anniversary edition available. you can try it and see if you like it. I have xp pro here at home, because I have dial up. I like Ubuntu better. Ubuntu is not as susceptible to viruses and it's not as much fun for the virus maker to foul up Linux. I'm on an old Sony Vaio with 192 memory and it runs fine. Run disk cleanup at least once a week. A freeware program, Ultradefrag is great. Download it from Sourceforge. It's fast to install and it works very well. The first time you run it, it may take a while if there are a lot of fragmented files. It does two passes. The first, it locates the fragments. The second, it defragments. If you run this once a week, it will help.