Im going to try to explain the problems:

1) I have an anti-spam software called Cloudmark installed on top of my Outlook. The weird thing is that right after I installed it and used it with dial up, the performance was excellent. Now that Im back in my office on a cable modem, the Outlook has gone nuts.

2) Outlook is taking some 5-6 minutes to do things like delete emails.... and I mean 10-15 emails, not a huge bunch of them. During this time, I just have the hourglass and cant to anything else.

3) I get the message: "a program is trying to access your Outlook address book" or something similar, its the same message I get when I synch with my palm. I have to manually allow Outlook to be accessed for 1-2-5 or 10 minutes. This is a minor annoyance that Im willing to live with, but I wonder if it has to do with my other problems...

4) When Outlook hangs, I will sometimes get the "not responding" message on the window title bar. Also, if I activate the task manager, when its hung I also get the not responding label in the task manager

5) If I forcefully close Outlook, sometimes it will complete the task it was doing before it went dead, ie. delete some files out of a SPAM directory

6) I dont think its a mail server thing, since even though I do have a cable modem, Ive configured my outlook to send and receive mails only when manually prompt it to do so.

7) Even simple tasks like reading an email take ages, when I click it from the Inbox I quickly get the header of the email.... but the body doesnt show up... I just get a blank white background and the task manager shows Outlook as "not responding".

Do I have a virus....? I have AVG anti-virus software installed and updated, so this cannot be the problem.

Any tips & ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks very much.