With dsl, defrag weekly and a pretty good running system (an old Pentum II with 266htz & 4gb) seems faster speeds couple months ago with initial hookup. Would like to know how I can pull faster speeds again. I know it can be done without upgrading to something more expensive but can't figure. And why would speeds be declining? I run disk cleans, defrags and do clean ups. Please advise. And thank you.

Have you been installing any new hardware or software since it was running nice and quick? When you "do clean ups", are you getting rid of everything in C:\Windows\Temp and the temporary internet files folder?

Sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner. Out of town w/o access. Thanks very much for the info on "speed". Worked well!! And I do appreciate the different times you've helped me...Try this one on for size. I need to defrag and my system's telling me I have to scandisk. Subsequently, as I do, the scan is jammed everytime. I should'nt have any disc errors. So how do I get a scan performed so I can defrag? Sorry about bothering you. This is a nuisance and I could really use some advice. Can't really afford to hassle with replacing disk (don't seem how that could happen ), but may not see something. If you can take the time to study this problem, thanks so much in advance.

OK, here's a suggestion. Go to Start Menu > Shut Down and choose the Restart In MS-DOS Mode option. At the DOS prompt, type cd\

At the C:> prompt, type scandisk /all and press Enter. This will attempt to scan all drives or partitions but without all the stuff such as anti-virus scanners, etc. running in the background of Windows. Constant re-starts on Scandisk or Disk Defragmenter usually mean that something keeps accessing the hard disk and reading/writing to or from it. This is typically anti-virus software or network "keep alive" signals.

If you don't have a Restart In MS-DOS Mode (I can't remember whether Windows ME was the first version to get rid of that), then boot up from a boot disk. At the A:> prompt, type c: and press Enter before following the other instructions given above.

Thank you for reply. Why can't I leave feedback for you (positive feedback and stars?). System stating I have to "spread around rep". Guess someone else will have to answer a question for me so I can do this. Sorry. What's this "booting up from boot disk?". As you wondered, ME doesn't have Restart In MS-DOS mode. I know this may be a bothersome question (Couldn't find info), but this sounds like a possible solution. Thanks again.
P.S. I'm not worried if this isn't the solution. We'll just check something else at your convenience.

With your Windows ME system, you should have received a method of starting the PC up from a disk. You probably have a floppy disk labelled "Windows ME boot disk" or "Startup disk" or something similar.

If you don't, you can download a new boot disk from http://www.bootdisk.com.

Then, once the boot disk has been created, insert it into the floppy drive on the PC and then reboot. The PC will boot up from the floppy disk instead of the hard disk. Because the floppy disk doesn't have an installation of Windows on it, this will boot up to the Command Prompt or DOS Prompt. Then, you can follow the instructions above to run Scandisk without Windows being loaded