Yes, yes. It is true. I once used the downgraded BlackICE defender firewall. And I am still suffering from the mistake: Ever since I installed the firewall, my system has been slow to startup. I have a HP 1.3 Celeron with XP Home. Yes, I know XP and Celeron are inherently slow when used together, however things (startup in particular) got even [blur]slower[/blur] . Is BlackICE linked to my slow startup? (remember, the slow startup was in conjunction with my installation of BlackICE)