I read with interest your issues. Bear with me and a couple of questions. When did you install SP2? Was LW and Windows Media player running ok prior to SP2? If it was the conflict is most probably a dual issue. XP SP2 has several new conventions that enhance firewall and other security issues that will conflict with the media player. Make sure your Windows Media Player is the latest version. The problem is not with your graphics card or hardware. It is a conflict that will need to be resolved by another patch from MS. HOWEVER, if you are getting the problem with other P2P's than I'm guessing it is SP2 and the way it deals with the media player. I read in one of the update announcements that there would likely be conflicts with some applications and I recall them directly mentioning P2P's because of the new security updates. You might try restoring to a time prior to your installation of SP2 and see in you still have the issue. You can remove SP2 and restore SP1 until they come out with a fix which I'm guessing will be soon because you aren't the only one with the issue. If you got your laptop from HP directly they won't be much help or sympathetic about .00003 seconds after you tell them it is a P2P conflict. If you are new to MS OS's, in the future I wouldn't run right out and DL any new SP's for a few weeks until all the immediate release issues are worked out. Incidently, I run an AMD Athalon 64 3200+ on a K8T800 Motherboard with 1024MB DDR 3200 have a MD nVidia card with MD C-Media card and don't have any real issues. As a matter of fact, I can run LW full bore and have no degredation on my SBC DSL. One thought occurred to me--Is it the same movie or all movies? Once in a while I get a file that has some hiccups in it.