Wow, thanks for the info guys, some useful stuff in there.
I guess my point was, it would be nice to force MC to defend it's memory, and let the other background stuff fight over the page file. Still, not very sensible for most people, but my home machine runs MC, that's it's task, everything else is secondary.
I guess it is time i look at more ram, there are times when i really notice i don't have enough, along with HD space!
Bill, thanks for the tip about VNC and the video mode! Amazing, i have been frustrated for ages trying to work out why i get a better connection to my home machine 3 miles away than i do to the pc on the next desk! The pc on the next desk is only a P3 with onboard graphics.
No probs with security firewall, i use mcafee for virus checking (NOT the full suite) and sygate for the firewall. I have found them to slow things up in any way, unlike my systems i have used with the full norton suite or mcafee for that matter.
Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions guys, i can see i'm now going to spend some time updating various versions of things, i haven't done it in probably a year.
cheers
mark