All Right. I restored the factory default from the restore CD that came with my laptop. I had time to back up all my personal files, most of which are music and video files, to an external HD, so there was no loss of data. The restoration process was tedious but not difficult. After the restore, my laptop has been behaving well, and I am determined not to clutter the lap top with lots of evaluation software. (Not sure how long it will last, though.)

I reinstalled most of the programs that I use frequently. I’ve got a few more to go, but I can wait until the weekend.