Silly posts disappeared.. just wanted to make sure this tidbit got back in.
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I had the same problem you are having with my WinME machine. Basically I had to defragment my hard drive every day or it would just bog down completely. I believe it has to do with a bad install of the Operating System.. because after I formatted the drive and reinstalled everything it ran ok.
ME is a bit buggy.. and I dont think its an OS to run any kind of business applications on.. but for gaming or a home PC I guess its not so bad.
Upgrading might be the best option in your situation.. to 2k or XP.
Ok all done.