Well not to beat a dead horse but I am a little slap happy from being up so late so oh well. Macs are not that expensive, get a Mac Mini for $400 bucks, and as far as what macs are used for you got to get passed the ipod and Imac. The current G5 runs on two 2.5GHz dual core processors running on a architecture designed to run bus loads of data and store it on 16 Gigabytes of DDRAM. Why have two processors so while your encoding video you can multitask and download and process 20MB RAW image files while typing a reply on a forum. Macs aint just for kids. I'd hate to disagree with you on Microsofts Legacy software, their whole problem is their software. Ever wonder why all your applications you run on Windows look different, why Explorer looks different then your dial up connection app, or why Windows Media Player looks nothing like Windows Movie Maker; or why Outlook does not resemble Word, Similar apps, but way different code running each. Reason why is that Microsoft has hundreds of departments writing code for apps that don't work together. As a result you get a bloated operating system named Window XP that has to manage all of these apps that have conflicting code and stich it together so you have a working computer. It really is a big mess when you look at XP in the old DOS. !!!DOS!!! I can't believe anything still drags DOS around. Why do you think Windows based computers need to have liquid cooling systems in them today; they need to cool the CPU that has to run Windows. !!!Liquid Cooling!!! Last time I checked liquid and electronics are a bad mix. Here is an interesting quote: Microsoft chairman told "It's not going to work" By Andy McCue Published: Monday 26 September 2005 Microsoft was forced to scrap the first incarnation of Longhorn  now called Windows Vista  after a senior executive warned chairman Bill Gates that it was too complex to work properly. Jim Allchin, group VP in charge of Windows, told the Wall Street Journal he dropped the bombshell last summer, simply telling Gates "It's not going to work". Longhorn was so complex that Microsoft's developers would never be able to make it run properly, Allchin told Gates. The root of the problem was Microsoft's historical approach to developing software  the so-called 'spaghetti code culture'  where the company's thousands of programmers would each develop their own piece of code and it would then all be stitched together at the end. According to the WSJ interview, Allchin faced opposition to his call for a completely new approach to how Microsoft develops Windows  firstly from Gates himself and then the company's engineers. The new approach was to develop a clean solid core code base for Windows which new features could more easily be added to over time and Allchin introduced new tools that would automatically reject buggy code." end quote Well maybe next summer you might get something to replace Windows XP and yes it is sloppy code and yes hackers find flaws in that code to take advantage of weaknesses in Windows based computer systems. As for Vista, or Longhorn, or whatever it's called it's a long way off, they had to start from scratch, thats how bad the operating system your using now is. Microsoft should have started from scratch a long time ago. To everyone I know this is a gardening site, not a tech site, so I apologize for the rant and I will not speak of this matter again. I think I'll follow up on some bamboo threads.

Thanks for all the suggestions - I tried looking at the "Filter MAC Addresses" and not sure I am understanding - but I went to the web address for the router and found the place where you can select the option for "Only Allow Computers with MAC Address Listed Below to Connect" but that option was not selected and no addresses listed. So I didn't feel comfortable setting it up as opposed to adding another address if there'd already been some listed there. I did follow the instructions for finding the address on the laptop but the number looked a bit strange - just a bunch of zero's with an alpha character at the end which made me think maybe I hadn't found the actual address and of course that made me hesitant about adding to the router for fear I might foul up the 2 computers that are working correctly. I did try the 'flush' and powered everything back up in the sequence you gave me but same thing, and then had to do it again in order to get the 2 original computers back online. So now, I am debating the uninstall of the Lenovo ReadyConn - I may try that when I get the courage. OR I've been thinking that I might just be better off buying a new router. The one I have is 3 years old - if it's old for a router, then maybe that is my best bet and hope a new one will fix my issues. I can't thank you enough for all the help you've given. I'll keep working with this and trying and re-trying as I have time over the next few days. If/when I get this resolved I'll let you know what I've come up with. Thanks again for taking the time and making the effort to help - it is a great comfort to those of us that so desperately need it. Frances

More info: TFC (Temp File Cleaner) will clear out all temp folders for all user accounts (temp, IE temp, java, FF, Opera, Chrome, Safari), including Administrator, All Users, LocalService, NetworkService, and any other accounts in the user folder. It also cleans out the %systemroot%\temp folder and checks for .tmp files in the %systemdrive% root folder, %systemroot%, and the system32 folder (both 32bit and 64bit on 64bit OSs). It shows the amount removed for each location found (in bytes) and the total removed (in MB). Before running, it will stop Explorer and all other running applications. When finished, if a reboot is required the user must reboot to finish clearing any in-use temp files. -- TFC only cleans temp folders. -- TFC will not clean URL history, prefetch, or cookies. Depending on how often someone cleans their temp folders, their system hardware, and how many accounts are present, it can take anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or more. TFC will completely clear all temp files where other temp file cleaners may fail.

Cable connections are usually "always on". Get some software that blocks outgoing requests until you can approve them. Look for a "two-way firewall". ZoneAlarm is one. I installed it on a friend's PC and she was aghast at the number of programs that were contacting the internet without her knowing about it. They were mostly games her kids had installed, but they were constantly (even when not running) sending info back to wherever.