i should have put my specs in. i have 768mb of ram, and i have a nividia gforce2 mx/mx 400 video card. as i said, i don't know that wb is causing any of this. it seemed to get worse after i installed icon packager, but i haven't tried uninstalling it yet. as far as the defrag problem, i don't know if it started before or after object desktop. for the last 2 months, every time i analyzed the drive, windows said it wasn't necessary. now that it is, it can't. by the way, the reason i'm not using the faq, is because on my pc at least, the page is missing any questions to click on.

To be honest by what you're describing it sounds more like a dodgy hard disk than dodgy software. What does defrag do? Completely fail to start or hang immediately? Try doing chkdsk c: /f from a command prompt. This should schedule a disk check for the next reboot. Also when you say it fails on bootup does it give an error message? Does it just hang? What stage does it get to before failing? Have you tried any other accounts?

My old hard disk had a point when it would start to chug and corrupt data. Until it got over 95% full I had no problems but after that point it exhibited similar symptoms to what you describe. After some further checking it then developed a nasty scraping noise and it was obvious it was defective.

I hope it's not hardware related for you. It's quite traumatic to try and backup almost 10GB of data with a nasty scraping in the background and a long pause every few minutes.

The /r switch is a more complete check than the /f switch

You may have software running (maybe in the background and appear in the system tray) that is causing trouble for WB. One (or maybe more) is likely to cause trouble. You can find out if that is the case by disabling them all and then run WB. If the computer is behaving then try to enable them one by one. Each time you should check if verything is working OK. If you find the offending one(s) we maybe able to help you to find some settings or alternatives that solves the problem. And of course it is a good thing to check for virii.
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Not really related to the question, but just my input concerning the reformat solution.
I have found personnaly that a complete reformat once a year is not a luxury, with any version of Windows including XP. From my experience, Windows slows down to a crawl after a while, and reformating makes wonders. Last time I did that, I couldn't believe how much faster my system suddenly became.

I reinstall at least twice a year but I have 2 drives so it is a breeze for me. Just reload all the programs no problem, just stack those suckers and load one after another.
I like the fuss though.

first, it would take too long to reply to each answer, so i'll just say "thanks" to all of you for the help and ideas. i'll check the update, if i have it ,it's in my records. i'm encouraged that no one believes it's related to stardock products. neither did i. as i said, i tested first. but i wanted to see if anyone else had had similar probs. i am upgrading to a 120gig drive in a couple of weks, that will eliminate another possible culprit. in the meantime, i will checkout the other tips. i'll keep you posted.

this sounds more and more like a graphic card problem...try going into Control Panel/Display/Settings/Advanced/Troubleshooting and move slider a notch to left...keep moving to left until the problem goes away. If it doesn't do anything, at least you'll know it's not the card Also make sure you have the latest drivers for your card or if you just put new drivers in, roll them back to the last drivers installed.

Why stop at 120 GB? 200 GB are coming down in price real quick like.

I like to rip my DVD to my hard drive so I do not have to keep searching for and putting DVDs in my DVD rom. Takes up alot of space.

desides, I have a crap load of programs... 100 or so... big ones like autocad and such. big hard drive helps. I don't have a 200 GB now, but I plan on getting one. I have filled up a 80 recently.

Personally, in your case I would reformat. Who knows what kind of bug you may have. But first, I would get a copy of Spy-Bot Search and Destroy too(its free), run it, and pay attention to missing system files that maybe referenced in the registry as well as trojans and spyware. As Karma-Girl mentioned there are a lot of nasty worms out there on the net. I hope you have a good firewall too. It sounds to me that you installed something that contained spyware or you got a trojan that a good firewall would have blocked. And they will hog your system resources gathering information to transmit when you connect to the net. Running Spybot will tell you if you do. But, regardless, if you find adware or trojans or missing system files, I would reformat. You never know what damage has been done to your system. Sometimes when you uninstall software, it will erase system files that it updated. But, I've uninstalled object desktop many times and reinstalled it without problems.

As far as Object Desktop, did you uninstall all the free copies before installing the purchased version. You might get conflicts if you didn't.
Also, I would erase the directory as well, because files maybe left after an uninstall. I would also restart my computer after each install of Object Desktop Programs.

Lastly, I would be careful applying non-manufacturer drivers from Windows Update. They have a lot of third party drivers(MWD Drivers for soundblaster and NVidia) that once I installed my system crashed and I had to reformat my whole system. My system just wouldn't start right, like you. They just seemed to clog up my whole system. And of course, Microsoft accepts no responsibility for third party drivers. If you need drivers get them from the manufacturers website. Good Luck.