Computer/Internet Lockup

Clarifications

The problem you describe is not quite usual behaviour. Windows XP can be a bit slow when it is downloading or applying the regular updates from Microsoft. If you have scheduled anti-virus scans, they may show similar symptoms, too. In both cases, you should still be able to use the keyboard.

It sounds as if your PC may be infected by adware, spyware or some other nasties. Do a full virus scan and a full spyware scan using reputable anti virus and anti spyware applications.

Especially on the spyware front there are numerous rogue applications in circulation which claim that they clean your PC from spyware but they do not. Find a list of trustworthy products from http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm#trustworthy, or check out my page http://totaldata.biz/spyware.html#Removal

OF some sort but if you are sure that the unit is clean I would then be looking at the Network and how address are issued and what lag is on the LAN.

Depending on how the LAN is configured it's possible to take this long to allow connectivity and it's possible to cause the individual system to appear to lock up when it's actually devoting all it's available resources to joining the LAN. This is much more common on a poorly setup Domain than on a Workgroup but it's possible on either. Though I would expect a Workgroup to initialise much faster.

The most common time that I see problems like this is where a computer is moved between a Domain and a Workgroup it can have issues with logging in to the different environments. Something like a Domain at work and a workgroup at home or the Local Maccers with the Open WiFi Access Point.

The fact that this happens whenever you plug in a CAT 5 Cable tends to point to a poorly configured Network where the computer has to wait to be allocated an address. But it could be a combination of an infection and the LAN Setup.

Col