AOL IM causing memory conflict?
 

Every time I run AOL IM, my clock speed slowly starts deteriorating. This causes hiccups, slow down, etc. The phenomenon will "pause" if you exit out of IM, but the clock speed won't recover without a reboot. If I leave IM on for several hours, the computer is darn near unusable (and the clock is about 2 hours behind).

Thoughts?

Poltergeist?

not that I have a clue as to whats going on, have you tried opening AIM when your not connected to the internet, does it slow down then?

But first things first:

What OS, what system specs, tower/laptop, anything you can tell us that can help us fix this.

I know this is not a troubleshooting solution to your problem, but try switching to Trillian, you can use it to connect to AIM, YAHOO, MSN, IRC, and ICQ all from one program.

Are there any upgrades to AIM you may have missed, or are you using a beta of an upcoming upgrade?

Weird. Sounds like something is suspending clock interrupts. If something thinks it needs to be responsive - usually something highly interactive or with a high potential for lost data (like a chat app) - it can suspend interrupts that might keep it from doing its job. Software is at the mercy of hardware and operating system priorities, but software makes use of high priority services and can therefore trigger a weak driver's problem.

What kind and brand of network connection? Have you updated drivers? I could see a skank USB or Wireless driver leaving interrupts suspended too long for some calls. If AIM is looping that call continually for your chat session it could cause the type of problem you're describing.

Just a theory of course, but I've made enough of those errors myself.

I'm on a Pentium III, 1 GHz, 512 MBRAM

Windows ME

I'll check to see if I'm on the latest version.