Hi Guys,
I believe I have a software issue here. The problem is, whenever I try to open anything with winrar, for example, a notepad file that is inside a rar file, my computer lags up and freezes. HOWEVER, if I shut down zonealarm this does not happen. But I have opened many text files in rar folders before this and nothing has happened. Any ideas? thanks!

Lawrance

ZA may not be the only program in play. Look in the Event Viewer and see if there are any error messages.
The Event Viewer in located in the Administrative Tools in the Control Panel.

Thanks for that tip. I was able to find many error bubbles and each one of them were linked with "Media Center Extender Scheduler" or "Media Center Extender Services." This seems reasonable because my home network is also not functioning. Is there any way I could fix this? Thanks!

Lawrance