Slow to get to WORD files

[Pat S.]

Folks-about a week ago, I decided to delete several
hundred word files on a directory on my C Drive which had
been there for going on up to four years. They were just
taking up space that I wanted to recover. I own a Dell
Inspiron 500 (purchased in 1999) Notebook PC and about 6
weeks ago, my husband installed WINDOWS XP OS and Windows
XP Professional on the notebook.

After I deleted the files (I am NOT a PC type), my
husband told me to go in to some recycle bin thing and
make sure I truly deleted them all from the system.

A couple of things are happening now that are no fun.
The first thing that happened after I did the recycle
function is that when I was in a WORD file, I would hit a
key to type a letter and it would take seconds to come
up. Over the phone my husband instructed me to go to the
Help area, cursor down to detect errors and, with the XP
OS in the CD drive, run it. The result was good and bad;
the delay in typing in WORD went away but now I have new
problems. When I try to look up a file anywhere up to a
point on the directory right before I deleted that chunck
of files (names of these files started with r and ran to
Z), it takes MINUTES to just get the cursor to move to
that region of the folder where I need a file.

It also takes MINUTES just to go from "MY documents"
directory on my C drive to this other directory on the C
drive where i deleted those 100's something of files.
Just bringing up a WORD file after I do finally find it
also takes over a minute, sometimes more.

When I first deleted those files by highlighting them
(usually 14 at a time) and manually hitting the DELETE
button, my husband said to do that thing with the recycle
bin that I talked about above. I think I did all of that
correctly but he wasn't here supervising me so I'm not
sure. What an incredible delay I have induced in to my
system. And, FYI, this happens whether my Dell is in its
Advanced port replicator or with me when I am away from
home meeting with a client.

Can somebody help this helpless Non-techie PC user. I am
losing valuable time with work and I work from home so my
PC is critical to doing my job as a rehab. counselor.

Thanks very much.
Pat Summers

 

[Sundev]

Try checking your hard drive for errors. Assuming it's your C drive that's
causing the problems:
- Go to My Computer
- Right click on the C drive and go to Properties
- Click the Tools tab at the top
- Click "Check Now"
This will check your drive for any errors it might have. It may say that it
can't run now, in which case select the option to run after the next
reboot.

Hope that helps,

Sundev

 

[T.C.]

If you are SURE that you only deleted .doc files. Even if you didn't
defragment your drive after deleting that many files, it should not take
MINUTES to bring up a Word .doc file on a system that's not on a network.
If it's a stand alone machine, I'm thinking that the problem might be
elsewhere. It might be coincidental that the slowing down of your system
happened at the same time that you deleted those files. The first thing I
would do is: There was Windows Update 811493 that caused many systems to
really slow down. If your system is set to Auto-Update, or if you Updated
Manually:

To remove the original 811493 security update:
In Control Panel, double-click Add or Remove Programs.
Click Change or Remove Programs.
Click Windows XP Hotfix (SP1) Q811493
(or Windows XP Hotfix (SP2) Q811493), and then click Remove.
Click Next, and then click Finish to restart your computer.

If that doesn't fix the problem, or isn't applicable, then try using System
Restore, and select a Restore Point just prior to when the problem started.