yes, it was a full format and fresh install. she then installed zone alarm, connected to the net and downloaded the windows updates. from then on, start up was okay for a few tries ... and then the pc froze up (which it was doing before all of this).

i suggested that it must be the old version of zone alarm and that she should try downloading sygate for those few times when the pc did not freeze.

that was when she brought up the question of going to 2000 instead.

since she cannot get online to post a thread about this, i volunteered to do it.