Home Network Issues, Win7 Crashing

[awraynor]

I have had this problem for over a year now and it is quite perplexing. I have a wired/wireless network. My broadband provider is ATT 6 meg DSL as that is all that is available in my neighborhood. The router/modem is ATT provided, connectivity frequently dropped, until they installed a "business class" unit in my communications closet. That was problem #1 that was finally made better. The next problem has involved 3 different desktops from a Dual Core AMD machine, a Q9550 with 8 GB of RAM and now a Corei7 running dual SSD's. So, I don't think it is for lack of processing power.

I have had many programs on Win7 Ultimate that will literally "grey out" and become unresponsive. These include windows explorer, Outlook 2010, PaperPort, and programs of just about any type. Outlook did become a little better when I changed the imap settings to sync less often and not include my gmail trash folder with thousands of messages.

The remainder of my network includes a gigabit switch, a WHS v1 Server, the three desktops and 2 notebooks. It is frustrating that youtube will frequently have to buffer a low res video. I don't know if my problems are related to throughput, but the wired desktops are much more problematic than the wireless notebooks. Is there any home oriented software that can evaluate my network?