Hey, thanks for the reply. well it looks like it was avast. in webshield i went to expert settings. then exclusions. added youtube etc and every thing works fine again. firefox and IE.
i also deselected scan all file types in websheild and added my own list of dangerous extentions to scan.
firefox and IE no longer spiking, running smooth.
also randomly a friend on msn just mentioned to me his pc was doin the same in ff and ie, and i had actually got him to install avast yesterday. his is working fine now also.
thanks for the reply