Hiya Jim, Gordon,

| I don't have room for Grandmum, but would like to hear
| your results.

Your loss :), she makes a trifle to die for.

The Chicken Soup recipe failed.
current status:
Opening XL 20 seconds
After opening a file 1.539Kb , I resorted and closed the file
the file closed in 40 seconds, then left another file "Personal.xls"
which took 20 seconds.

I opened the file again, did not touch it, and exited
this took 70 seconds to close.

I take pride in good computer husbandy, and expected the temp file
to be minimal however the status was
http://cjoint.com/data/kqc4eR4BJd.htm

Most of the files are 0Kb files generated by ACDSee
with an extension of "descript.ion"

I had squillions of "Add-ins" ticked
so unticked all bar the "Autosave" which I like to have.

I have yet to defrag, but do that on a regular basis
I have an ME defrag engine on my Win98 machine.

I have never run "Disk cleanup" ever, is this a "risk" at all ?

I have a 4 million record database aboard, and rather not
take any risks on HDD shuffling.

Thanks for your hints thus far.

Best Regards
Rodney