I've noticed that my well-worn OE XPSP2 can take an extremely long time --
or possibly just hang -- when I do a 'Reset List' on news servers with a
large number of groups, say 30K and up. Servers with a small number of
groups are instant.

Note that this isn't an issue of bandwidth or server speed, since I have
broadband, and the list takes about 5 seconds to add when I add such a
server. Likewise, I've tried a 'Reset List' on the same servers in an SP1
VM, and it worked in about 5 seconds.

What happens on a 'Reset List' in my main SP2 though is that the group count
climbs very quickly to its maximum, as it should, then just stops, and OE
takes all the CPU (or, more accurately, half on a HyperThreaded system)
while generating a single file in the Temp directory with constantly
changing names such as 'tmp2DBD.tmp.' The file ranges in size from a few KB
to about 4MB. It seems to be confused for some reason.

I have a P4 3GHz with 1MB RAM

Thanks