I will check out an online virus scan - Zonelabs is good (never had a prob yet in about 3 years of running it) - I can't run Norton as it kills Crypto, which is one of my main sites, and eats the hell out of my resources for some reason.

I'll check my memory now....

Well, i right clicked my computer/properties, and on "General" I get this:



Is that the apparent processor power and memory I have available? Because when I bought this PC I thought it was more than that (pretty sure I had 512MB and like 1.6GHz processor when I bought it.

Since the defrag it's running stuff noticeably slower (for instance when I opened a youtube video it took ages to start, some programmes are running a little slower). Will check out an online virus/shit scan now...

Other than a few P2P things I dont use (and that have been uninstalled) your pestpatrol thing only picked up cookies basically. I've deleted them with SpyBot. Going to try a virus scan too just in case, will use zonelabs and an online one.

Dood, you really need more RAM. I'm not saying its the cause of your problems, but you do need more.

Try memtest86, if you haven't already.

the ram is your problem then. 512 is about the minimum with Windows XP. The poker clients are fairly memory hoggish, especially if you multi tabling.

Monk,
When the video card cooler was dying, and it froze the screen, it froze windows with it.

Good choice on the glass chopping board.

It is possible that your video system is "sharing" system RAM and using 128MB on it own.
Also, you have left your computer to decide how much processing power to use and it is slowing down the CPU when it thinks it doesn't need maximum performance.
Both of these things can be adjusted towards more performance/less battery-life settings.

To adjust how much memory your video is using is a setting in the BIOS, I believe. Try 64.
To adjust the CPU usage, Control Panel, Power Options. Choose the maximum performance settings if you are rarely on battery power.