I use window washer regularly to clean all my cache,internet traces,recent application lists etc.... thanks for all your input everyone i think i get it now . First run my window washer progie, stop all my running tasks reboot and then only defrag without any running processes (i.e. no use of the computer at all during a defrag) is there anything wrong with using diskkeeper to defrag the hd in windows 98se? or is norton speeddisk specifically designed for windows 98se ?