Thanks again Rick for your efforts in to fathom this mystery. The *RadarSync* is another one of them there programs which shows one all the problems (supposedly) and then a slight charge of only 29.95 for a whole one year of downloading drivers.

Actually, I think it showed something like three drivers associated with the cpu (again I think if I remember correctly).
Thirty dollars spend and probably no fix leaves one wondering why one hadn't invested that much money in Tim Hortons!?!

Today, my system slowed to a crawl ... something I hadn't seen before. No viruses / spam / trojan horses that I can find with SuperAntiSpyware / LavaSoft Ad-aware / Norton 360 etc .... and nothing seemingly making the hard drive act up either. Then suddenly, lo & behold ... all is well again. If you've something else up your sleeve, let'er come this way. Thanks!