I tried the defrag method, but it's still randomly causing around 50% usage with LimeWire.exe and 50% with explorer.exe. Like I said before, I don't think it's a hardware problem. I'm running a brand new Maxtor 300GB SATA with 16mb cache. Games, Photoshop, and Azureus run flawless so I don't think it's lack of memory either. Same problem on the new drive like my old one. I'm not running any other programs when the freeze happens either; just LimeWire and two windows folders. *shrug*

When my computer starts freezing I either hit reboot or let it idle for 5-10 minutes and the CPU usage will finally drop down to 2-3% on both programs. Actually, this might be a shot in the dark, but I'm thinking it could be a codec issue. I have the K-Lite Codec Pack 2.54 Basic package installed. Should I try the Full package version? That might explain why explorer.exe is having high CPU usage (missing codecs), but I still don't understand why it would cause LimeWire to skyrocket as well. Perhaps I need to uninstall/install LimeWire and Java over again.

LOL, I blame WinXP! I'm learning Ubuntu Linux on my old 'puter so by the time Vista comes out I'll be switching to Dapper Drake / Breezy Badger; whatever they plan on calling it.