Hi Sparrow, its a 750 GB serial ATA hard drive (manufacturer unknown) 7200 RPM

Right now, 32 Bit only (when software that I want ramps up to 64 Bit, I'll switch to 64 Bit
Yep know about the RAM limitations for 32 bit operation, didn't know about the Graphics card RAM being part of it-don't really need a coprocessor graphics card with a quad-when I get graphics software that can use multi threading.

Sue, I'll try and delete all my firewalls and virus checkers again and see if that will work.  I really think though that it was the latest two OS updates that did me in--and somehow all my restore points were deleted except the latest two.  Haven't gotten the SP3 service pack yet (what I can tell from it is that it is a collection of all the updates since SP2 plus a few minor additions-well if that is true, I don't need to get it).  The others are networking-I don't do networking, others are outlook express-don't use that either.  I do believe that it is an OS problem.  Carrara worked just great a couple of days ago.  I'm going to do a Google search on this problem--Jan