From vista onwards the OS defrags in the background all the time so you shouldn't need to run a defrag. If it's XP it might help. Death of PC usually means hardware death of the hard drive, indeed slowing down is usually the same problem. Buy a new hard drive and use Maxtor to make an identical image of your current one, then simply swap the, out. Your laptops may well run like new. It's all those knocks and bumps that a laptop suffers thatbdoes the damage. We're not far off solid state hard drives form the likes of you and me, and they are a lot faster in terms of io, but right now they're still a tad pricey.