Thanks, lee. Trend Micro could not download, but I successfully ran RAV scan, which found no viruses (Phew!)

Thats good to hear.

software conflict, perhaps?

Possibly, but i don’t know too much about software conflics, are you using more then one firewall/anti-virus at the same time?, that can cause conflics.
But i think it is best to use the scandisk/checkdisk and mabey even a defrag, this sometimes helps, they will be someware already on XP, i don’t use XP so i don’t know exsacly where.

Also have you tryed a spyware scanner such as spybot which is free to use.

If none of this works you may have to try reinstalling your OS (in your case windows XP home), but don’t do this untill someone who understands more about XP replys, they always do.

–lee