First Problem

Hello, Well i have experienced my first issue with the 737...more accurately i think that it is the 737. While i was flying over Scotland (rough day to fly today btw), FSX stopped for a while, the WIndows 7 blue wait circle appeared. Perhaps 30 seconds later things sprung back into life but performance was down, the cursor also kept changing between the normal Windows 7 arrow type, and the 'wait' circle, alternating perhaps once every half second. This continued for about 2 hours, again seemed to have an effect on performance. The only thing logged in Event viewer was a message regarding the Software protection service starting and stopping. Any ideas? Thanks