Thanks Alex. Its not that then.
Could i do what Marix said, save all my channels then load up a new image on my external drive and use that to boot off instead?
NO! You yourself told us that, even without the HDD nothing changed! What for changing it, then?
Im thinking that perhaps ive overfilled the flash with excess apps etc as they all still seem to be on there, things like xtream.
Of course it's much more likely that you installed too many plugins, not PERHAPS! 99% the problem is there. As for our poor PC with the problematic Windows, we install and install and install as it was for "free". But it's not. The more you install, the more you make your system heavy.
Fortunately, with Linux-based images, once you uninstall it's not like for Windows that you solve only 50% of the problem: here you solve almost completely.
I don't know and don't use this Xtreme plugin, but surely, each plugin you uninstall the lighter your system will be.
And, of course that app SEEMS to be still there: they are installed in flash, as we said, not in your HDD.
You can also get info about your system status by the Image menus.
But surely you can try uninstalling, one after one, your plugins and test for a while your system. And connect your HDD: it's not the responsible (although, of course, the day it'll have too many defective sectors, you'll have slow-downs).
Finally, the best and definitive solution would be to save your channels by a software for your PC or by the image plugin OpenWebInterface, and then reflash your box from scratch. Then... don't install useless plugins
But you can do that only and if you don't solve as said above.