HOLD IT!!!
Before you try any of these suggestions, please make sure you back up your current data. I spent the last 20 years as a computer monster repairing, troubleshooting and building machines of all flavors. I will not claim to be an expert, but I do know a little more then the average computer user.
The biggest causes of problems I dealt with besides for failing hardware? Someone knowingly/unknowingly edited their registry; ran defrag; ran some clean-up programs; installed shareware programs such as screen savers, games and utilities or deleted files they thought they didn't need.
Defrag can be a great tool - if your machine does not have any problems. I spent 2 days recovering bits and pieces of a user's irreplaceable research data because someone told him to run a defrag on his slow laptop. It was slow because the hard drive was failing and the defrag destroyed it.
Editing the registry? Sure it can be done, but you better know what you are doing and read everything thoroughly or you can trash your machine.
Scanning for spyware and viruses are relatively harmless for your machine so I have no problem suggesting those. Unless I know the user's skill level and have a better understanding of the problem and what the machine has installed/saved on it, I would never suggest running defrag or editing the registry.
Michel |