Phil writes:

<<I just checked my system information and it says I have 72% of my resources
free.  >>

If that's immediately after a fresh reboot, it's far too low.  Means you
are robbing your computer of a substantial portion of its potential
performance.

Once you open and use a few more programs like browser and email, you may
be down to a dangerous level (say 40% as a rough rule-of-thumb) very
quickly. Then you'll see ghost buttons and possibly other quite horrible
things. The symptoms you indicate are then fairly normal, as others have
already pointed out. Even if system resources shows a higher figure, use of
resources is a pretty dynamic thing, and can peak up and down rather
dramatically.  So you need to keep plenty in reserve for those "peak"
intermittent actions such as opening and closing programs.

In an effort to maintain low memory at the most efficient level, my theory
is that Windows will allocate memory to matters of higher priority than
extinguishing the taskbar buttons, then "forgets" to return later to finish
off the job. Thus the button remains, ghostlike.

I recommend no less than 90% free resources at bootup, (mine's 93%) with
only the bare essentials running.

To quickly check free resources in Wxx, click "Help"/"About Windows" in any
Windows window, then you'll see the figure displayed.

Most new computers come with far too much loading at bootup.  Get into
msconfig and be ruthless!

Don Penlington
Free computer tutorials at: http://www.geocities.com/donaldpen/
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