Did all that you suggested..
I could not find the scanner in device manager..( maybe looking in the wrong place) but removed the programs ( anything to do with HP).
In printers and faxes.. there is an old printer showing up.. HP deskjet which i had disconnected ages ago.
The pc booted up within 10 secs...
I did the disk cleanup and for the defrag.. after the analyse.. windows came up with defrag not needed at this time.so did not defrag.
However.. seems i have another problem.
I decided to do a sweep with spysweeper.
the pc froze.. and noted that it froze at the following
c:\windows\system32\paradise.raw.exe
What is that?.. where did that come from?
I powered off. and tried to reboot.
windows loaded.. and pc crashed after all the icons came up ( the message re 00002968.exefailed to start because sharernui.dll was not found also came up)
Have tried to reboot pc.since... but windows wont load ..crashes immediately
I thought we had the problem solved!!!.. after so much hard work and patience on your part.
Please advise
Thanks and regards