I'm not sure the answer to your problem duncare, but I have to laugh when they say that XP is suppose to run great for older systems, because bla bla.... Well I had XP Pro running on my P3 550 and boy when I first installed it...well it was kinda nice and speedy sorta. then within a short while the thing just went boom. slow slow and I did all the same things you did and no answers so I am curious what it could be. Then I just made myself a new system and kinda forgot about the old bugger, might have to tinker with it again.