No problem. I like a challenge.

De-fragmentation is always a performance plus, especially with today's gigabyte drives. Some technicians will tell you that it is impractical to partition a large drive for local use but I seriously disagree with this.

If your hard dive is say, 30 GB and you are using a single partition, then this means that a fragmented drive has to do a tremendous amount of work to load programs and open files. Even a de-fragmentated drive will have sluggish performance. Cutting up a large drive into smaller manageable partitions is always a smart thing to do, which 1: decreases the de-fragmentation time 2: allows the readwrite head to find and load programs and files quickly since the actuator does not need to search so many clusters for data, but only those clusters belonging to the logical drive.

2: The system tray is on the lower rght of your screen and no doubt it it probably full of icons. These are called TSR (Treminate and Stay Residents) because they remain loaded in memory even when you are not using them. Firewalls, Anti-Virus Auto protects, Quicktime, Audio hardware and some other programs are all TSRs. Some of these, like firewall and Virus Protection, as well as your audio device you should obviously leave alone at least when you are online. Other programs like Quicktime load into memory at start-up and you must right-click and turn off the manager, or re-install the application being sure to opt not to load at start-up in the first place. If you are running a firewall, these programs will also periodicaly request access to the internet for updates or advertisements, etc. In that case you need to configure your firewall to prohibit those programs access altogether by 'blocking' them.

Palm Pilot software requires a COM port to work. It may happen that this software will try to use the same port as your modem., in which case you will not be able to log onto the Internet. Disable the software from the system tray.

3: Caches. Everyone knows-or should-about the notorious file INDEX.DAT located in your Temporary INternet Files folder. By default you cannot open this file, and even if you empty the folder periodically, it remains full, and continues to fill up with every bit of every URL you visit, even sites attempting to visit you! Nor can you delete this file; but you can obtain a 'wash' application like Windows Washer to completely clean your operating system of all traces of data inside of INDEX.DAT, as well as MRUs(Recent files kept by media players), cookies, and other content. This is highly recommended. If you have a PTP client application you can obtain a copy of such software[didn't here it from me].

4:SPYWARE. AARGH! Your system is loaded with parasitic registry entries called spyware, small programs that literally keep track of your online-activity. If you don't have SPYHUNTER yet, GET IT.

5:Registry Editing. Both re-partitioning and Registry editing are tricky affairs at least as long as you are not familiar with either process. If you are not, I do not suggest you attempt to edit your registry manually. You could get completely locked out of the system if you make a mistake. However, the tweak is most useful since you can turn off very many of Windows functions that you never need to mess with, recnet files saving, display, device management properties and CD autorun as well as many others.

You may also edit the CONTROL.INI file to dispable Control Panel applets and thereby restrict un-wanted access and thus changes madeon your system.

A last word on Partitioning. It is best to use 2 hard drives for your data, the first drive 10 gigabytes or less, solely for the operating system and hardware devices. The second drive should be partitioned into small logicals for other applications and data.

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PARTITION A DRIVE WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT YOU ARE DOING. Partitioning is both a creative and destructive process. One keystroke will DESTROY ALL DATA ON A HARD DRIVE. And there is no recovery that data once this occurrs. The same is true for formatting. These actions should only be taken when you want to completely re-install your operating system.

Lastly, get more memory. And do NOT use memory management software.

ONE LAST NOTE: STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER.

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