-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Jordan, <<the one much lower down on the drive has real problems. It boots up but runs so slowly -- and with so much *unnecessary* disk access -- as to be unusable. For example, it might take Xy 5 minutes to come up, after it is invoked. When that happens with things that are really light weight, like FreeCell or Notepad, it's clearly a major problem. However, if I leave this W2K running for an hour or so and then return to the computer, it will mostly run O.K. until I power down. That seems very strange to me !>> Maybe it's the dreaded Explorer memory leak. Open the Windows task manager and kill the Explorer.exe process. This will temporarily blank your desktop. Don't panic. Restart the explorer.exe using the "New Task" button in task mgr (see screen shot, connect the dots). This is a shot in the dark. If that doesn't cure you're sluggish partition, I've no idea what else to try. If it takes ages to power down, then you may have a hive cleanup problem. This is a known bug, solvable with a freeware patch from MS. <MD FL> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkuf39cACgkQHrcIRRZeloFjPwCghd3ou/ltT9aWwv1mVQX1Y0sM IIYAoJqpmsualsy64068Oau5xIJ7dbpp =wwBT -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----