Glad the fresh install has helped. Did you install from the original downloads or did you  download them again?  I'm really not a fan of downloading these huge program files instead of installing from discs... so much can go wrong with just one byte out of place during download.  I've (knock on wood) been lucky up until now. Now that I think of it, I think 256 might be the default which is why it reverted to that during your fresh install.

Best of luck!
Rob

128 is the default and I've never had any reason to change it, even with ancient PCs. If you need to go up to 2048, there must be something seriously wrong with your system...