For the past month or two, my Windows Live Mail has stopped responding for up to a minute for no good reason. If I highlight a handful of emails and hit "delete," the screen goes hazy and I get the "Not Responding" line  along the top bar: "Windows Live Mail (Not Responding)."

I have to wait -- several seconds to up to a minute sometimes -- until it kinda wakes back up and remembers I'm trying to do something. This happens constantly, and it takes me ten times as long as it should just to go through my inbox.

What has changed to have caused this Not Responding reaction, and why is it happening all the time? I keep the Deleted Items cleared out, and I deal with my inbox and have no more than 100 things in there at a time. The rest of my mail gets filed in appropriate folders I've already created.

What's going on and how can I stop it from happening? It's a real drain to the productivity to have this happen every single time I try to use this program.

Thanks.