thank you so much for reply. these steps excluding the de-frag has been done. plenty of space on the drives left, more than 30 GB. I have issue that it seems to only affect my win2k systems. then only not all of them. this is so weird. thanks ..... i even set page file size to 880 min ans 1024 max, and dnsclient to manual in services in case the mcafee was locking the HOSTS file. but to no avail. am going bald from the inability to solve this one. yes i have uninstalled the mcafee, no problems, except the obvious security ones, or the fact that whatever process is being malicious, can now go ahead "unabated" I am also using a march edition verion of the mvps,org HOSTS file. and have used the updated HOSTS file on some other affected clients, still same results.

"what is HJT?"