MP3 thing: As a test, I removed "mp3" from the list of shared file extensions. It didn't run any better for the rest of that session but when I closed and restarted limewire, it seems to be running more smoothly, with 95M process size instead of 105-120. Still sharing 9433 files. Any clue what's going on here? It does look as if sharing one mp3 file is more "expensive" somehow than sharing one jpeg file or even large mpeg file, in terms of performance and memory demand. And why would having lots of mp3s shared make it either think it needed more than 1GB RAM or think I no longer had anywhere near 1GB RAM?

Peerless: what "utilities" package? For what software? What's the detection procedure for whatever it was that you had? URL to read up on it? Any new kind of malware existing detector software doesn't catch I need to know more about.