hmmmm....well, the fact that you are using windoze firewall is a concern to me...PeerGuardian is good, but it only blocks certain IP addys as opposed to acting like a real firewall (which IMHO the windoze one is not)...

have you tried hitting ctrl-alt-delete to open up the task manager and seeing what's happening when things go south?

I would be looking for how much Mem Usage the apps are taking up (on the Processes tab) and I would also look at the Performance tab and see how much the cpu was being put to use...

if things look good in the Task Manager, then my thoughts would be leaning towards you are being attacked and possibly hacked while using the gnutella network and the results of said attacks/hacking are the symptoms you describe....

I use Kaspersky products for security and if you take the time to do a google search you will find that while its not #1, its right up there with the highest rated products....not sure what exactly is available that's compatible with x64, but I'm sure a little research should give you the info you need....

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So Long and Thanks for All the Files
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