[oldbrokentapes]

Originally Posted by RainDawg

I'm not sure what I installed. Somehow XP just started downloading stuff...it doesn't really tell you what it's doing. I'm not sure how to go back and check exactly what has been done to my system.

Go to Windows Update either via this link or probably better off via your Start Menu. Sadly it'll probably want you to use IE but we all have to make sacrifices sometimes . Anyway, on the menu bar on the left you should see the option to View Installation History.

Yesteray I installed some updates which are shown to be the following:
Security Update for Windows XP (KB885836) Successful 17 December 2004 Automatic Updates
Security Update for Windows XP (KB873339) Successful 17 December 2004 Automatic Updates
Critical Update for Windows XP (KB886185) Successful 17 December 2004 Automatic Updates
Security Update for Windows XP (KB885835) Successful 17 December 2004 Automatic Updates

These are the only updates I've had since the SP2 set, and it claims all of these are uninstallable via Add/Remove Programs if required. Anything you recently downloaded/installed is probably worth looking into. I'm pretty sure none of these have caused me a problem, though I'm running on XP Home which could make a difference (but is probably unlikely). I just jumped on the most seeded torrent on EZT, connected to about 20 seeds and got (steady) speeds of up to 80kB/s, which on a connection that can handle 180kB/s isn't as fast as it could be, but is fairly normal for a good torrent who's seeders are probably doing other things with their connections. Certainly nothing like the problems you're having anyway.

That's about all I can offer I think. Hope the Windows Update info at least provides an avenue of research