Kubuntu Stole My Computer

[Bill vance]

Howdy;

A week or so ago, I got a slew of bug-fix/updates.  Since then
My machine has gotten slower, and slower.  It sits there doing
nothing, and the instant I move the mouse, or start to type, the
drive light comes on, and stays on, and on, and on, and on.

Going through the launcher, it took over twenty minutes to load
Firefox and get the bookmarks list going.  It's getting worse by
the day.

The System Monitor, and top don't tell me that what it is, but do
say that its doing mostly reads, and some writes on my hard drive,
and is using 100% of the CPU's time.

Can someone __PLEASE__ tell me how to fix this?

Bill