For the past few months, a few applications have taken long times to fully load. These include MathCad, the Windows Printer Control progam, and AOL. The program will begin to load, then delay for a minute or more before loading and operating normally. While it doesn't seem to be specifically network-related (for example, Gravity loads just fine), in the case of MathCad, unplugging the network cable will cause it to resume loading in a few seconds. Meanwhile, Internet Explorer (v6.1) starts OK but sometimes (the problem is intermittent) takes forever to fully close. When this happens, and IE is closed, it partly closes, but the task remains on the task bar and task manager task list. It can't be opened from the task bar, but will close in 10 seconds or so when the "End Task" function is applied. I've tried defragging and removing Windows Update Q811493. Neither seems to help. Any ideas?

I've seen spy/ad-ware bring a system to it's knees more than once. You might download Spybot search and destory or Ad-Adware and see if this causing your problem. It is the first I do when people tell me the system just started running slow and 95% of the time, it is spy/ad-ware that is causing the issue. KTTD

OK... I got and ran Spybot. It got rid of some things, though I had to preserve C-Dilla, since MathCad requires it... BUT, now SERVICES.MSC no longer works! Any ideas?

this looks to me like a swap file problem. try either enlarging your swap file from the control panel->system->advanced->Go to where it says "Performance" and click on the advance tab. You should see "Virtual Memory" at the bottom. Increase the number of megs you want your swap file to have. Then reboot. If you dont see a drastic change (if you increased the number by a few hundred, there should be a DRASTIC change)then you should either back-up your stuff and format/re-install windows, or de-install all programs related to network and internet operations and install the ones you need bit by bit.