Thanks for the tips, Lord. Over the weekend, I deleted the preferences file and purged the downloads queue (very little in there anyway). It made a slight improvement but overall LW still running very poorly, long wait times after clicking on anything, and slowing down performance of any other applications running at the same time. However, I didn't perform your first suggestion: "Have you tried a safe boot & repaired permissions?" as I don't know what this is. If you (or anyone else) can excuse my ignorance, then I'd be greatful for a guide to getting it done. Cheers ...