after certain amounts of time, all buttons on the desktop, including the start menu freeze up. What i mean by that is that when i click on the button, it won't do anything. it only happens everyonce in a while.

I've seen this problem occur pretty often... normally it's one program running in the background that's frozen up(I've noticed Pc-cillin tends to do this, and I've heard McAffee isn't much better). I suggest looking to see what's all running on your system. Often the best fix is to disable all of the 'useless' programs that launch at start-up (ie. Realplayer, ICQ, AIM, etc.) these programs can always be launched manually if you need them (why waste resources if you don't have to). If this doesn't work, check your hardware settings and disable the power management features. Another possibility is a Trojan/Virus, but I doubt these would be the culprit as your only problem is freezing up. If you have no idea how to do any of this, post again and I'll walk you through. Hope this helps, Dre