I think it’s time to defragment this computer as it’s about two years old and has never before been defragmented. I don’t have any spare DVD’s to backup my important files to though. I’m currently running the XP Backup program for all of my files except for music (I have most of it on CD’s) and unicycling footage (about 10GB and there’s only a total of 10GB free space on the hard drive). Basically I’m scared of loosing all my unicycling footage. What are the odds of the defragmentation going horribly wrong and me losing it all? Is this a common thing?
Also, for some strange reason I’m no longer able to access the Control Panel without it soon locking up (the Control Panel, not the computer) nor am I able to right click on anything in the Start Menu. This is just a recent thing and it’s really frustrating because I want to uninstall unused programs and change some mouse settings.
Any help?
Thanks in advance John. 
Andrew
Defragmenting rarely messes up a disk. The big risk would be the power suddenly going out during the process. But the defragmenters are careful about that. They don’t erase file segment until it has been written to the new location. So if the power goes out suddenly the data will still be there. It’s a low risk operation.
The thing to do when defragmenting is to create a new user account that has nothing running in the background. Keep it simple. Disable the anti-virus. Disable any unneeded services. Etc. Then there is little that could cause a conflict.
Another problem can come up if you have something running in the background that writes periodically to a file. Every time it writes to the file the defragmenter has to resync and may have to restart. That’s one reason why you should disable as many background applications as possible.
I don’t know what’s up with the control panel. Check the Windows\System32 folder for a new *.CPL file. Those are the control panel applets. Any *.CPL file in that folder will get loaded into the control panel. If there is a new one that is not behaving well then it could cause problems.
For the Start Menu you could try Tweak UI to adjust the Start Menu delay. Maybe the menu delay got changed.
Or check you mouse configuration. Maybe the right click got changed to something else (like maybe a double-click or some other operation).
Thanks a lot. The problem with the Control Panel has fixed itself now that I’ve run the Disk Cleanup…very odd, but I’m pleased.
I thought I read somewhere that you had to be logged in as the administrator to perform a defrag. Is this not true?
I’ll see how things are running after the defrag and then if need be, try those other suggestions of yours.
Thanks a lot, you’ve always got a really helpful answer to my computer questions. 
Andrew
You may have to be an Administrator, I’m not sure.
It’s easy enough to make another account that has Administrator privileges. Make a new account with admin rights and then disable the background processes for that user and make things as simple as possible.
I’m not sure about XP Home and how it handles additional user accounts. I’m used to Windows 2000 and XP Pro. Sometimes I forget about what XP Home can and can’t do.