When 'Disk Cleanup' fails...

Over the past 3 days, I have set aside a bit of my time in the afternoon, to 'revive' my brother's PC to a better operating & functional state. And today, I finally succeeded!

About a week ago, I bought the latest Norton Antivirus (NAV) 2006 coz the NAV on his PC has expired & mine was about to expire in a matter of days. So I spent the afternoon of Day 1 removing the older version of NAV that had expired, installed the new NAV 2006, downloaded all the necessary components, fully updated his virus definitions & did a complete scan of his entire PC files & folders.

On the afternoon of Day 2, I discovered that the 'Disk Cleanup' option doesn't work & the Disk Defragmentation option is very messed up. So I consolidated all his miscellaneous files into a single folder, deleted those files which can be copied in again later from my own PC's back-up disks, did a back-up of his PC files into 3 CD-Rs & ran the Disk Defragmentation operation several times.

Finally, on Day 3 this afternoon, I tried to work the 'Disk Cleanup' function again, but it still didn't work despite leaving the PC alone for more than 1 & 1/2 hours just to carry out that very simple operation. It didn't work, so I tried another way. I manually deleted the temporary internet files, offline webpages & discarded files in the Recycle Bin. Wow... just deleting these files took like 10 minutes! Shocking! Finally, these clogged up unwanted files was deleted, so I ran the Disk Defragmentation function a few more times.... & Wola! It works! My brother's PC is working well again! Not as 'snail-crawling' as before!

Lessons to learn:

Regularly perform:

1) Disk Cleanup & Disk Defragmentation, if you use the PC everyday.
2) Update your PC's antivirus components & virus definitions.

Other helpful tips:

1) Defragment whenever you delete or install major PC programs.
2) Run Spyware Removal tool to prevent malicious internet viruses.