Laptop Trauma - please help!!

[bossychloe]

My laptop took 7 hours to complete a 'checking file system on C' then was running so slowly I decided after consulting the help desk to use the disk cleanup and disk defragmenter option (which took hours to complete!)
Now it 's just as slow and takes forever to start up... the desktop takes so long to appear I almost give up!
Please, please can anyone help me - should I use the system restore option - I am scared to switch it off in case it doesn't start up or show the desktop again.
I haven't added or changed anything so cant understand why it is playing up.
Please somebody help me - I am desperate and a dunce!

[ACtheTROLL]

My guess is one of two things ....
lack of memory (but from what you say - it's been OK .... so maybe faulty memory?)

more likely .... your HDD is full
when windows starts up it creates a shed load of temporary files .... some for windows some are used as memory, some are used by the file system itself.

Without getting too techie
you need a minimum of 20-25% of the total size free disc space.
so a 100Gb hdd in effect (at best) has an effective capacity of 80Gb.

depending on how much memory you have fitted .... you might get away with exceeding that .... but best not to.