Delay when Previewing project

[Stewart]

VS9 is very frustraiting. When I want to view a clip in project mode , I click on project and have to wait 30 seconds before it responds. It does not matter if it is a large or small file. Then often after it has finished the mouse cant be use for several seconds because it is busy do its own thing who Knows. This does not happen VS8.
I am ithe middle of a wedding video and I have discovered that a VSP created in VS9 does not open in VS8.

I stilll Have a problem with the whole program disappearing when I try to open up a VSP . A 7 min one will open ok but the 26 min vsp opens after about 3 goes. I have plenty of hard drive space 512mb ram AMD Athlon XP2600+cpu.
Any Ideas?
Stewart