Do Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up your Task Manager, click on the Processes tab, and click once or twice on the CPU tab at the top of the listings: this will show what process is chewing up the most resources (which will probably be the culprit). Also, look at the CPU Usage line at the bottom of Task Manager and see what the % Usage is. Then report back here on what you found out.

Two steps backwards, one step forward. While dealing with the impending death of my own pc's hard drive, I had plenty of time to work on her computer. I opened the case. Cleaned out the dust bunnies much more thoroughly than I had in October. I found the fan - and actually took it out and cleaned it thoroughly (mostly compressed air, and a little damp cloth). I did remove the label and add a drop of WD 40. (While I was at it, I searched for replacement fans in case this didn't work - and bookmarked some - it would be so simple to replace if needed.) Put the pieces back together and started it up. Still noisy. I started organizing her files, deleting duplicates and ridiculous things she didn't even know she had on there. I put everything in logical folders - then copied her 16GB of video (Ipod videos and flip share) onto a 32mb flash drive. Deleted 8gb of that video bc. it's also on her ipod. Then I ran auslogics defrag. Defrag was 100% successful - and she now has about 15GB free on a 40GB drive. Now the noise is less. I hear the fan a little - but you have to stop to listen. Not sure if it just took running a little for the oil to do it's thing. From what folks said earlier, it's unlikely that freeing up space and defragging reduced the noise. So far, so good. (I even think I could have turned it on with the case open - but i didn't have to.) Thanks. Lynn.

Wow, there is a lot of good information here. Glad I posted with my problem, now I have something new to try out. Thanks owbist. ravencajun, thanks for the compliment but I only had the first half of it figured out and cboy came to the rescue and helped me with the last half of it. I can't take all the credit. "Smiles" Then zep516 came in catching the fact that System Restore wasn't working right and gave me great information on how to correct that. This was the first time that I've had problems with my desktop, but I have changed the backround on it before and I remembered that and I thought why not check it out and see if I could get it to change and that is when I discovered that the backround had been changed and all I had to do was to put it back like I had it, but then I didn't know how to get the icons back and that's when cboy posted the solution for me. If that ever happens to me again I will know exactly what to do. Thanks owbist for telling me how to move the icons down to the taskbar. I will try that on Wednesday, I will have more time to try it out then. thirdfrt!!!

I honestly don't mean this to be derogatory or to rain on anyone's parade, but I don't really understand the draw of either of those shows. What is the interest? They are just normal people who happen to be a different size than most. They have struggles and joys and love just like we all have struggles and joys and love. I can't imagine that people are drawn to watch the shows just to see little people, but isn't that the only thing that sets them apart from most of us? That's a genuine question, really. Would the shows be just as interesting if they were regular people of normal size going through everyday life? As far as I can tell in the few times I've watched either one that their size is the only thing that makes them different from you and me. As you can probably tell, I'm not much on so-called "reality shows". But I'd really be interested to hear what it is about these 2 specifically that draws you in.