Here's my specs, straight from the "Performance and maintenance" tab: 

MS Windows XP Media Center Edition version 2002 Service Pack 2

HP Pavilion
AMD Althlon 64x2 Duo Core Processor 4200+
2.20 GHz, 960 MB Ram
Physical Address Extension

Total Page File Size for all drives: 1440MB

 I did notice that my antivirus was generating a lot of actvity, so I temporarily turned it off. That didn't seem to help much. But with Norton, who knows what's really going on? 

The file opening  problem just went away on the problem file!  I hate intermittant malfunctions. Their like trying to catch a mouse out of its mouse-hole.  

Happy Nuke Norton Day!