when I`m deleting files my machine comes to a complete halt and I can`t do anything except reboot. It seems to be worse with large files. Can someone help me on this?

Dear Jonno, This sounds a bit odd. Are you able to provide some details about your setup. Versions of "Windows" and "Word" or "Office" etc. Memory installed. How many programmes are running at the same time.CPU type,speed. This will probably help others in the Group more knowledgeable than me to identify why you're getting this problem. Separate suggestion: There are some free programmes that "shred" files. "Necrofile" I think it is or "Evidence Eliminator", I expect many others too. Usually, these are on computer magazine's free disc. You could try temporarily installing one of these programmes and checking whether they also take a long time and/or completely freeze, - just for curiosity. One other thought, have you recently "Defragmented" your main disc drive and also is there a lot of stuff in the Windows "Temp" Folder. I defrag daily via "Fix-It Utilities" (Ontrack) rather than the usual Windows defrag tool and also empty the TEMP file and RECENT Folder (the latter, for which I have a little enhancement programme). I believe that a very full TEMP Folder can cause a slow down. There is also a free programme called "Powerdefrag" I think it's called and supposed to be better than the Windows defragger and I expect most of these can be found if you write them into "Yahoo.com" or "Google.com" and then later download. Regards, Victor, W.London, UK. (sent at about 2.45pm, Monday 24/6/02)

Dear Jonno, Further to my e-mail above, there is one more thing that you might check. On the desktop, where the "Recycle Bin" is shown, if you right-click on it and click on "Properties" at the bottom of the drop down menu (well this is how it is on my screen), there is a slider setting which you can move. This decides how much space on your main drive disk that you wish to reserve to have the "Recycle Bin" carrying out its job. Perhaps, you have a lot of deleted material in there already and the slider needs moving over to the right a little. This of course assumes that you have not yet emptied (deleted again) the deleted items in the Bin. If you definitely don't need all the deleted files/folders anymore, presumably you have right-clicked and then clicked on the "Empty Recycle Bin" tab, otherwise you can selectively delete via the "Explore" option after right-clicking the Bin. Please forgive me if all this is known to you as your original message didn't give a lot of details. Regards, Victor (sent from W.London on 24/6/02 at 3.29pm)

Nicely done Victor.

There is a known Win9X bug that causes the system to 'seem' to lock up when deleting a large number of files. The next time it happens, let the system sit for 5-10 minutes and see if it wakes up.

try deleting them without putting them in the recycle bin. press and hold the left shift key down whilst selecting delete. Failing that, restart in dos mode and delete it that way. if it deletes ok then the problem lies within windows. hope this helps