I recently installed a new MSI motherboard and Athlon 64 processor to replace an older MSI board and Athlon. Everything works OK except when I click on a shortcut or a link in a website. I use Windows XP SP2, Tiscali as my ISP and Firefox, sometimes IE6, as my browser.

Clicking on links and bookmarks or favourites usually works but there are times (fairly often) when I get a message that the URL cannot be found. Two or three attempts later and the link works. This problem seems to be fairly random but always takes the same form- a few attempts before the link/shortcut works, and it happens in both browsers. When it does happen it seems to persist for several minutes, on most of the links I click on, and then eventually everything works fine again.

I never had this problem before I changed the board and processor. Any suggestions as it is mildly/very annoying depending on what I am trying to open.

I have also noticed this happening when I am on E.Bay, and sometimes the E.Bay link will open, but not the photo until I go back and open the link again, when the photo does open.

I've had this problem with firefox on a dual CPU box. Is your CPU a dual-core one?

when you replaced your motherboard and processor did you re-install xp? for a change like that it would be highly recommended to do so, especially as you have a completely different processor let alone motherboard

I re-installed xp SP2 with all the recent updates when I rebuilt the system.

I have un-installed Norton Antivirus 2004 which was running in the start up menu and was showing about 40% CPU usage on Task Manager and stopping anything else loading after the PC was switched on. A known problem apparently. I now have AVG installed which is a free antivirus program and causes no problems. The problem with the shortcuts/links still exists unfortunately.

I quite often get a message on Microsoft Outlook saying 'pop.tiscali,co.uk - Sending and Receiving' reported error (0x800CCC0D) : 'Unable to find the e-mail server. Please verify the server information in your account properties.'As far as I know my account properties are correct. I have qureied this with Tiscali, my ISP and they are no help whatsoever, telling me to reset the e.mail account settings to what they already are, and have been for a long time. Never had this particular problem before I changed the system either.

My next step, reluctantly, will be to uninstall all of the programs I have, except Outlook and firefox to see if the problem goes away. If it does i will then re-install the programs one at a time to find out which one may be causing the problem, although I have a feeling it's an operational problem within the system rather than something caused by a program, in which case I am stuck.

AVG can sometimes cause that message, but I've not seen it for a pretty long time. One option is to increase the time outs a little, it may sort it.