Yup Norton sucks. I got tired of the incredible drag the freakin’ thing put on the computer so I kicked them to the curb and now run AVG with zero problems or slow downs.

I’m amazed that Norton is still in business.

George

It might be a slightly different route to defrag if you’re on Vista (another level of pain Microsoft should be ashamed of). If you’re in any doubt, I can try and help out further or you can ask Mr Google. I’m on XP still and have no intention of upgrading until Windows 7 has been around for long enough that MS knows it hasn’t screwed up again. Probably the worst culprit for slow computers is everything that runs by default at start-up. You can check this by clicking “START”, then “run”, then typing “msconfig”, then clicking on the “startup” tab of the system configuration utility that appears. All the items ticked are always running in the background from the moment you switch on the computer. I let my security software run, and anything that appears to be related to my system. You have to be careful because you don’t want to stop a process you need for your system to start up. However, the original factory settings in this startup list are minimal. I think you’d be safe unticking any programs you know you installed yourself. You can still use them simply by clicking on them when you need them, which you’d have to anyway. I can’t really see why so much is set to run at startup by default, except that this usually places a little icon in your system tray bottom right, which is good advertising I suppose.

OMG I just turned into a geek.

If in doubt, I’d leave alone and ask for expert help. I don’t want angry comments from people who followed my advice and now have a computer that won’t work.

Thanks for your comments, Cath, always appreciated!