MatthewHSE - 8:25 pm on Feb 18, 2009 (gmt 0)

Thanks for the ideas everyone. All this will be cataloged away for future reference, but kaled wins the silver dollar. ;) My newly-reinstalled AV software was set to scan network drives, which apparently included FTP servers. Whenever I tried to do anything with FTP, my system came to a near-halt and caused all sorts of problems. Disabling that setting fixed the problem and I'm a happy camper again.

On a 10K RPM drive, no less, which does indeed make a difference in one's performance. :)