Hi Damon Sounds like malware is in your system. Do a full house-keeping and see what it shakes out. I had a similar problem a while ago and did just that. My system returned to normal after downloading and running just about every scanner I could find. Roger Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once. ----- Original Message ----- From: Damon To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, August 06, 2007 8:03 AM Subject: [access-uk] lag, slowness, computer hell HI there. A few weeks ago my computer suddenly powered off of its own accord. After re-starting, I noticed that jaws speed and the system voice had changed. I also noticed that many web pages seemed to load more slowly, and using Outlook Express seemed more sluggish. When I use Word, it throws up lotrs of error messages now. Many times when I hit REPLY on an email in Outlook Express, jaws freezes up. I often have to turn the computer off and start again. Some emails appear unreadable now too. When arrowing down on certain websites that always used to be (and are still fine on my work computer) fine, the computer judders and spits and, with a 5 or 10 second delay time, will read the next line after I hit down arrow. And the speech synth will kind of grainily croak out the words. I've checked my broadband and the connection speed is the same as it ever was. My computer processor usage appears to bea around 10%. I have been without virus software,however, for over a year since Norton was causing problems with my system. I realise I should have updated it ages ago. I now have Macafee on my PC from this week. I thought it might solve the problems, malicious viruses, adware perhaps, but it hasn't. Confusingly, when I use Sounforge sound editing software, I have no problems at all despite the huge amount of audio data in memory and being processed. All these problems started about 3 weeks after an RNIB volunteer came round and help me install a new hard disk and some more memory. Worked fantastically for 3 weeks. Does this sound at all familiar to you? Any thoughts on what I could do appreciated. I never really know whether I have a computer problem or a JAWS initiated problem. I'm using jaws 8. My computer is 5 years old. I have a 2.6 gig processor with 1 and a quarter gig of memory. Thanks all. ...Damon damon.rose@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx skype: damonrose London, England.