I put Vista into a 50gb partition and total used space on that partition is around 15Gb. Takes an hour to defrag it here if I haven't done it in a week or so. I usually close most things in the tray and all windows then open a cmd window, start it & walk away and let it rip... defrag -c -w If I defrag a couple times per week its maybe a 25 to 35 minutes, sometimes less. I too miss a graphical defrag display. Vista defrag pauses whenever you have something else actively doing something, on the same CPU anyhow. If you don't have ample free hard drive space it slows it down too. Also if you have minimal memory, that would tend to slow it a bit. 3hrs.. sounds like you either have a bunch of saved files... or you have some other program running doing stuff. Windows indexing service can slow some computers too.

When you delete you don't really delete but as Mikies says the first part of the file name is removed. This allows the computer to overwrite that portion of the hard drive when it needs to so. Your virus is probably written over by now and totally useless. If it will make you feel more comfortable do a defrag, that should take care of the issue. I believe most things placed in the virus vault are deleted by default after X number of days and they can cause no harm while in the vault.

AR, Your welcome as always. Remember to use CC in its default settings only and consider not using the registry utility unless you are familiar with the registry entries themselves. Also, let's not forget about error-checking. My Computer>right click on C:/ drive>Properties>Tools tab>Error-Checking Check Now>check both boxes>Start>Yes>Reboot system This maintenance service takes a while so don't plan on sitting and watching it. It appears in either a blue or black DOS-like screen so don't panic as to its appearance. It safe and hurts nothing. DA

polarprincess- What do you have on your computer taking up a lot of space besides a bunch of photos? I have a computer with an 80GB hard drive, and I have never used more than 20GB. Are you loaded up with some programs you don't really use, or music files that you don't listen to? Also, you should not be storing pictures permanently on your hard drive, at least without backing them up onto an external drive and/or a CD/DVD. Look at it this way, when your hard drive fails someday -- as happens to many people -- are you going to have a bunch of valuable stuff permanently disappear because you only saved it to your hard drive? I've had several friends tell me that they wished thay had listened to me when I suggested they do a backup of valuable files...but they never got around to it, and then their computer died. I'm not trying to lecture you...just giving you a word of advice.