Very old laptop, running slow, hard drive too full to do disk defragment. What shall I do?

[SoftKittyWarmKitty]

I've posted here before about my laptop (5.5 years old) being really slow and was advised to delete stuff off the hard drive, do a disk cleanup and disk defragment. I've done the first two but when I try to disk defragment it says I need at least 15% of free space on the C drive before it can do this effectively and I only have 4%.

Is there anything I can do to enable disk defragment? Or is my ancient laptop doomed?

ooh found it C drive says 48.7 is free of 111GB

Is that 48.7MB or 47.8GB that's free?

Sorry, meant 48.7GB.

48.8 GB free of 111GB

"48.8 GB free of 111GB"

OK there is something different going on....

Can you check the virtual memory settings for me?

Do this:

1. Click the Start button, click Control Panel, click System and Maintenance, and then click System.

2. Click Advanced system settings. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

3. On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.

4. Click the Advanced tab, and then, under Virtual memory, click Change.

What drive are shown? What is the paging file set for each?

For each drive with a paging file what is the option that is set? Custom, system or none.

Please come back with the answers to this on a new thread on the Geeky forum, that way we won't get answers meant for you tangled up with those meant for the OP. XP and Vista do work in different ways so it will be best if things can be kept apart.

thanks - will do when i have a proper minute to do this - currently surrounded by kids!