In my experience just having a computer lacking in specs can slow the experience down, especially with video going. I have 3 computers, 1 is a dinosaur that I don't use anymore, 1 is about +7 years old and this one is fairly newer. I noticed the +7 year old one plays video poorly, usually jerky and pausing to buffer all the time (and sometimes for minutes at a time). I attribute it to that older computer only having 256 kb of ram, where my newest one has 2 gb of ram and video plays fine on it. But yeah, Gardenweb isn't too friendly when it comes to all that, they'll load everything up. I remember when I had to use dial-up on GW, every click took like 5 minutes.

mago this is what it says about dom inspector on the firefox site: DOM Inspector is a tool that can be used to inspect and edit the live DOM of any web document or XUL application. The DOM hierarchy can be navigated using a two-paned window that allows for a variety of different views on the document and all nodes within. Note: This add-on depends on binary changes to Firefox, and will not work with Firefox 2. I do not have it, never used it, so can not comment on it, if you do not use it then you can easily remove it. In fact I see you have ff 2 and it says that dom inspector does not work with ff 2??? There is a post some pages back that I had started called tips and tricks that thread has a lot of good info on ff ad ons and other useful stuff.

Wendy no 32 bit computer can use 4 gigs of memory. Vista likes 3 gigs assuming the motherboard is capable. My Windows7 computer has 4 gigs as a matched pair but I can only use 3.2 something gigs of that. 64 bit computer can use more but there is the issue of a lack of programs written for 64 bit machines. When you hear the whirring noise do you see the activity light on the front of the tower either running steady or very frequently flashing? This might be a lack of space on your hard drive. You can check the free space by clicking Start and My computer. If the used and free space does not show then right click on your C:\ drive and click Properties in the popup. 25% free space is nice, under 20 and you find the computer slowing and the activity light flashing a lot.

How do you get yourself into these problems? Because you have a problem and are trying to fix it rather than ignore it or dump your problem on someone else. I find that to be very admirable. The good thing about this is you will be learning a lot in the process of getting things back on track. The down side is it is going to take a little bit of time if we do it here. Your are very lucky because there is a lot of experience her and, super people willing to help. There should be no fear of what to do with what fix-it finds if you decide to go that route. They offer several bits of information as to what found information does, and a suggestion of what you should let fix-it do, to fix your computer. You can undo anything fix-it does, with the click of a button. If you go to do anything that will screw things up, fix-it will tell you. If anything in any of the steps does not agree with what you see on the screen, don't continue and get back to us and let us know what the discrepancy is. There are several reasons why you might not be getting to the desk top you are used to and rather than a bunch of mumbo jumbo and jargon, we'll start with the simplest reason first. From what I gather at this point, you have multiple issues that are not necessarily "Computer Problems". To best help you get on track using a forum like this, I suggest we take one issue at a time. There are several ways to skin a cat so I am going to use what I know will get you to where you want to be. Of course, if you know a faster way that works for you, no problem, as long as we both get to where we want to be. We don't know what you know so if we describe a step that you well know, it is not to insult your intelligence or belittle you, it's just to get you where you need to be in a step by step manner. 1....The folder that YOU created named "desk top", rename it to "My Icons" and do so without the start and end quotes. The folder you created, from what you indicated here, has a space between the words "desk" and "top". That's the one you want to rename. 2....Click on the START button at the bottom left of you computer screen. Look for "My Computer" and click on that. 3....RIGHT click Local Drive (C:) In the left column at the top, you should see "Desktop" with no space between desk and top. Looking down a little further, you should see C: with a plus next to it. Click on that plus. When it expands, look down the list and you should see the renamed directory "My Icons" that you did previously. Click on that and in the right column, everything you moved should be listed there. 4....At the top of this window click on EDIT and when the menu drops down, click on SELECT ALL. Everything in the right column should become highlighted, usually in blue. 5....Take your mouse pointer over to the highlighted column click down on the LEFT mouse button and HOLD IT DOWN. While holding it down, drag everything over to the left column and up to the "DESKTOP", at the top of the left column. You will see the DESKTOP change color when you are on it and at that point, let up on the mouse button. Make sure you are on the DESKTOP name and that it highlights because if you don't, you may move everything into another directory, compounding the issue!!! Everything should now be back the way it was before you moved your desk top. If everything is back to what you are used to, we'll take the next step. My particular next step is going to ask for a list of everything in the task manager under the tab "PROCESSES". Do a "Ctrl" "Alt" "Delete". When the task manager pops up, click on the "Processes" tab. After you enter this tab, hover your pointer over the words "User Name". This will be the name of one of the columns. You have to hover over the actual words. Left click that and you will see everything organize itself. If you could then get us a list as it appears on your screen, we can work on the next steps. I have to go on an errand so it might be some time before I get back to you, I live in a rural area. Someone else here may pick up where I left off, I have no problem with that. The beauty of this particular forum is many knowledgeable people willing to help.