Troubleshooting reflection EME 5208

• Your frustrations: My computer was running soooo slow. It took forever for things to open; word was acting all strange (taking a long time to catch up to my typing, running sluggish). Why does this always happen when something needs to get done right away. I had a big paper due with lots of research to get done and my computer was just not cooperating. After I took a deep breath, I was able to look at the problem more logically and remember some of the things “techies” I have known in the past have told me.
• First thing I did was save my paper and shut everything down. Sometimes just rebooting can fix a problem. Unfortunately, not in this case.
• I decided to try a disk cleanup and see if that would do the trick. As I was doing that, my husband suggested that I probably needed to defrag my computer because it hadn’t been done in a long time. I really didn’t think I had the time to do a defrag, but he convinced me that I should.
• About two hours later I was back in action with a much smoother running computer.
• In the future, I will do a disk cleanup and defrag in preparation for a big project or every month or so. That way, I am not running into a panic situation when I am up against a deadline.
• I also need to back up my computer more often in case something tragic happens. I usually remember to back it up just before I start a new semester, but now that I think of it, I didn’t do a back up before this semester began. Oooops. There’s another thing on my to-do list.