Hi again guys Thanks for the reply, Coly (see post: 'laptop clicking and freezing' below). It looks like you were spot on. I ran scandisk from DOS, and it didn't freeze, and it fixed some stuff. BUT: it got stuck on one particular cluster, about halfway through. The first time I ran it, it froze on this cluster. I shut it down. The second time, it literally spent 3 hours on the cluster, thinking and clicking, thinking and clicking, until I put it out of its misery and shut it down. Do I have a buggered hard drive? Is there anything I can do? Again, ideas hugely appreciated. Andrew

sorry about the delay andrew i was working late; do not be afraid to rebuild/fix the registry by typing scanreg/fix this control function can fix alot of problems. this prosess is not to be worried about...try it and let me know if that works... best wishes coly zenno

Once again,you must leave a space after scanreg. scanreg /fix • TheKid •

hello "the kid". you don't need to put a space, unless your from united states. here in europe it works fine using scanreg/fix no spaces... best wishes coly zenno

Also *Andrew make sure no programmes are running in the back ground (except explorer).You should have seen a warning dialog box after so many attempts anyway.If what *coly said works fine, after scan disk,its always a good time to Defrag,I often have to wait for a couple of hours too,bumma'that,lol