Having got rid of Norton because of the many problems it caused, I switched to McAfee. I scrapped it when my sub ran out and they wouldn't let me renew it but said I had to buy a new version of their program. I now use a free version of avast!

I hate that sort of thing. Apple aren't the only ones to do it but it's still very annoying. I ended up with something called Bonjour when I installed Safari. I soon got rid of Safari, as I didn't like it, but I had to get rid of all the other junk that came with it as well. I managed to avoid getting iTunes however.

De temps en temps.  In fact I did it yesterday.  How do I turn off a router?

But that's not the problem really.  I get (Not responding) repeatedly.  I point to things, like Unread posts at the top here, and nothing happens.  I try to scroll down long web pages, and it gets stuck.  I type in Word, here or emails and the letters do not appear until after a delay, if at all.

It's not like this all the time, but it has been getting worse, I fear.

O and Speed disk has been going all afternoon.  I put the machine on standby while we went out to Holland Park, but it has only optimised 38%.  I'm going to leave the machine on all night.  Must get some supper and wine now.

18.1 GB out of 26.2 GB.  Should I get an extra hard drive?  I have deleted everything I can think of.

Ta, Ron.  I'll do it tomorrow.  Nightie night.

Sorry, no, I don't.  I get icons for Acer C, Acer D, Documents, Printer.  Where should I look?  I've got XP.

I left Speed Disk running over night.  1 am it said "Optimising Moving data 38%".  It still says that this morning after being left on all night.  How do I get it to resume?

I looked up the help screen.  It did not give how to resume.  It did soon say it was not responding.  But that is fairly par for the course here.

M T Wessel.  Thank you.  However somebody else said here that Windows Firewall should be turned off, as I understood it, or there would be two firewalls.

Yes, Don B, that's exactly what we want to know.

I'm guessing that this particular PC has been a fixture at Casa Basilio for some little while now. It would appear to be quite a venerable machine judging by the specs you've given us: the amount of RAM is pretty limited by today's standards, and I've recently had experience of someone else's Acer which suggests that their own extra proprietary software, which runs on top of Windows, can cause extra problems. I'd certainly predict that the lack of RAM's not helping at all: though by the time you've added to that and bought an extra hard drive, you'd be well on the way to replacing the machine altogether, so far as cost is concerned. I understand that this is probably not a financially palatable suggestion, but, depending on what you want to do with your machine in the way of using other software (image manipulation programmes, etc.,) it's a PC that's rather lacking in the oomph that most programmes require nowadays, and no matter what you throw at it, you'd probably be better off starting with a new one from scratch. In these competitive days, it would almost certainly cost far less than the old one.

I hope I'm wrong, but that's how I read the situation. What do others think?