Hi Jaap,

quote
Might well be in one of these cleaning sessions you lost some vital lines in the registry

Not likely, since I've had some programs that open slowly from the beginning, before I did any registry cleaning.

Actually, after compacting the registry with Win Rescue (basically a registry and files backup program), overall speed of the computer improves. Running RegClean makes no difference that I can tell, although the un-do files it produces are usually about 100KB.

So, while I would like all programs to open as fast as, say Notepad, which is instant, the others open at about the same rate as they did when the computer was new.

Perhaps defragging the HD would do as much as could be done...but that's not easy to find the hours to do since the computer is almost always in use.

all best,
mgj