Originally Posted by
Honeytruck
But from the replies, what I have to do is uninstall Works/Words, delete anything else (having backed it up first) and start again? Yes?
You can if you like, but you risk spending a lot of time and gaining nothing (unless do you actually completely wipe the disk and reinstall from scratch, something I've only done once since Win3.1 and that because I couldn't be arsed to find out how to upgrade NT to 2k and change domains at the same time, and then as it's a laptop you've a fair chance of ending up with a dooprstop).
Better than just taking the Dixons PFY's word for it that the solution to all problems is to "reinstall Windows" (the idea that you should routinely wipe every nine months is just nuts!!) would be to
(1) find out what is wrong
(2) fix it.
Favourites for your symptoms would include:
(a) a virus
(b) some piece of software which, during starting, is waiting ages for something that ain't going to happen
and favourites for (b) would include:
(i) you installed something recently but the installation went wrong
(ii) you uninstalled something recently but only uninstalled half of it
(iii) you changed some configuration on the laptop recently
(iv) you changed some configuration on the network that the laptop plugs into recently.
In neither case is going round deleting stuff at random or reinstalling the operating system likely to do any good without a complete hard disk wipe (and as others have said that's not something I'd attempt because it's odds on that you don't have copies of all the drivers needed and you'll only find out what you're missing when the thing won't boot far enough for you to fix it).