My friends computer was working fine. She wanted to have a firewall, so i told her to d/l zone alarm free. She did. Then after that, the mouse or application of anything will freeze for 1-2 seconds then continue. She has broadband, so it would be like you have dial up and you are waiting for the page to load when you spin the scroll wheel on the mouse. Prior to this she had her modem plugged into the front usb port, and printer in the back, she called and said the modem wouldnt work, i suggested just to try putting the modem in the back usb and printer in the front... so that got her modem back up. this was all in the same day. So, what could be the halting/waiting problem. It has been fragmented, scan disked, etc... could this be a usb problem? or a conflict of hardware? I am stumped. everything is operational and they are at 90% cpu perfomance. xp home, compaq box, i dont know what version. brian s.