Well, I've just bought a new pc for me, since my last one burned   ...
It's a normal P4 775 3.0Ghz, 512mb, pcix card, Sata Hd, MSI board 915 board.

I just installed windows XP as usual, only big change is that I'm using SP2, and I was trying the built in firewall. I'm also using the typical Norton Anti-virus 2005 .

Till now all ok, but I'm gatting many problems. Programs like emule, and even Microsoft Oficce just hang for no aparent reason. They just stop, and the rest of the system stays operational. No obnormal resources comsumption. And I don't make a clue why!!!!

I've checked for Bios configuration, all kind of hardware conflicts in IRQ, I've checked for virus and ad-aware. I've made a startup disk to check the memory for flaws, and everything came out negative....

I think it's not the network, since all work fine and Office does not seem to even access it when it hangs. But either way I'm on a Cable 640k in an Elsa modem in Ethernet pci connector.
I'm getting out of solutions here, and the error seems to be random, no rules in when/how to appear, it ussually doesn't take too long.  Any sugestions guys???

Thanks in advance! It's probably something simple I'm passing by....

Miguel Pereira, Portugal.