FFXI Windower Alt-Tab Lag In Windows Vista

Hello everyone!

I have been having this issue ever since I installed FFXI + Windower on my laptop, a HP Pavillion dv6707us running Windows Vista SP2. FFXI plays fine on my laptop while running it under windower 3.43 and previous versions, but every single time I need to Alt-Tab to Vista for browsing purposes or anything else, like turning on AbysseaWatch, etc., FFXI freezes and lags for about 20 seconds, then the screen switches to my desktop, or browser, lags for another good 5 seconds and then it all unfreezes and works fine again. My friends always tell me that whenever I Alt-Tab my character goes red dot, as if I was losing my connection and 20 seconds later stops DCing. When I Alt-Tab back from Windows Vista to FFXI the same thing happens, Vista freezes for about 20 seconds, the FFXI screen appears, then about 10 seconds later I regain control of my character, which has a red dot on it. When I get control back and FFXI unfreezes my friends tell me it's as if I had just came back from almost disconnecting.

I am tired of having this problem whenever I Alt-Tab to and from FFXI. This problem doesn't happen with any other software program I have ever used on Vista. Yes, I know Vista sucks, and that Vista is my problem, etc... but I know a ton of people who run FFXI Windower on Vista and none of them have ever had this issue. I have also googled for a solution many times, but have come empty handed.

Aero and UAC are both disabled, oh, and I'm running on Vista Home Premium SP2.

I should mention this issue also happens when using Windower Lite.

NVIDIA drivers don't seem to be the problem, as it happens with several of them.
The registry isn't at fault, nor is windows, because I recently did a clean install.
Viruses, etc. are not to blame, either.

Set FFXI (POL) priority to "High" - No improvement.
Hard Drive has over 100 GB free and is defragmented.
Turning off antivirus and firewall - No improvement, so I turned it back on before my laptop gets infected.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Valiarius - Siren

Wish I could help you, but I had a similar problem right after I installed XI on my x64 Vista.
I updated all my drivers and ran windows update and it fixed itself, idk which of them that fixed my issue >_<
Seems like you tried all of that tho..
GL anyways, hope you get it fixed!