The other day I did a Defrag and it restarted exactly every 5 minutes. I disabled all programs except Explorer and Systray, and Winmgmt (which would reappear everytime I told it to shut down); I unplugged the external modem and disabled the screensaver, but still something was causing Defrag to restart every 5 minutes, what could that be? Is there a utility which would tell me what it is?

You could likely doitin SAFE MODE. Try Msconfig & see what's loading at start-up WBEM hidden setting First, type MSINFO32 into the Run box & when its fired up click TOOLS on the menu. Click WMI Control, & then Backup/Restore tab.If this is your 1st visit it'll say AUTOMATICALLY BACKUP EVERY...30 MINUTES. Changed mine to 24 HOURS (the max) Weeks later, using "whats this" help found U could just remove the check & turn it off. Hit apply & U'll get a dire warning but I've run long time, no ill effects. This SHOULD minimize WBEM's impact. FYI: WBEM stands for Web-Based Enterprise Management, a system for remote computer access. WMI is the Windows version of WBEM and stands for Windows Management Instrumentation. WBEM is intended for use by system administrators, people who manage a large number of computers on a network. WBEM is installed on WinME/2000/XP by default. Even though WBEM is intended for use mainly on corporate networks, it's still installed on "Home" versions of Windows. While the default settings for WBEM limit access to your computer, there's no reason to have it installed on a non-networked system. Removing WBEM on WinME is more difficult. WBEM on WinME has no uninstall & there is no documentation for doing so.. It's linked with PCHealth, which is linked with WinME Help and the System Information program. If you uninstall PCHealth you can remove WBEM but you'll lose the functionality of Help and System Information. Onward to the APOCALYPSE!

Thanks B-CERT for all the valuable info and the suggestions on how to tackle my problem, I appreciate it very much; will get to work on it tomorrow and see what I can do.