Computer is HP, XP Pro, SR2; MS Word 2004 programs; use OneCare, Windows Firewall; Ad-Aware with caution, and checked my Memories, and Task Manager. Before Thursday last (pre-OneCare) I used AVG daily, Ad-Aware, Zone Alarm, Windows Defender, and ran Penicillin about every 3 wks. Lately, slowing down, (only using 27% of 1+ Gig) so with XP NG advice uploaded OneCare, and Uninstalled Acrobat, and AVG.

I go offline to compress my files in OE daily. I just found a host of ..bak files and folders in my Trash--some I know I deleted, but not all of them. This was discovered after working on my slowing computer the last 24 hours.

I've had trouble slowing down, but its zipping along rapidly now (it was the wrong VM max. due to my RAM) with old address book listings showing up in my present Address Book (and some I've deleted), so there are duplicates of many. Also,twice the past 24 hours had to make OE my Default Email handler. Worse, now when I hit Attach on an outgoing email, My Music folder with sub folders comes up, not My Documents. When I hit Format/Background/Pictures a browse window for "background" opens up and when I hit Browse the Stationery under Microsoft Shared opens up! It gets worse believe me. There seems to be no way to configure the defaults to match up between IE and Install-Uninstall window in Control Panel.

The following have been performed: Checked IE to be sure OE was my email handler (it wasn't), then went into Control Panel/Install-Uninstall and checked the Defaults, and they were changed. No one uses this computer but me. My memory, is fine. I ran OneCare, and it just wants me to download IE7. I've run the Registry tool from MS and its done. What on earth is going on? I'm afraid to empty my Trash at this point, but don't want to pull it all back into my Email, et al. I've saved each scanning widow report, Task Manager, et al. out of disbelief.

Incidentally, I was shut down off and on this week, three times by my DSL company, which "assumed" they were putting me on a new modem (their's), hence a new pin, and I hotly objected once I found out they had a pw I've never heard of for my email account. After playing this game with them for days, I requested a signed judge's order if they "had to" change my modem configuration, or put me on another pin since they won't let me use my own modem (a friend who is a well-known major CEO of an software/Internet company advised me to do that...and told me why they were doing it). Thus, they twice reconfigured my modem to another one I do not possess, and it knocked me off line for up to 36 hours each time, until I called "the shots" on them. Could this be the craziness I'm experiencing? If so, look out everyone. Hide your computers from the Internet, and remember Hushmail is free and uses PGP encryption (no more keys to maintain).

Thank you for any ideas or help you can offer to me.