Nancy, You ask if more pics would slow things down? In general, the more stuff on your hard drive, including pictures, the more it slows down. I've never been sure about spyware protection by AOL. This AoL page seems to claim that it does: _http://help.channels.aol.com/kjump.adp?articleId=220119_ (http://help.channels.aol.com/kjump.adp?articleId=220119) But you can still run AdAware from Lavasoft (beware imitators that are not of Lavasoft) and see if it catches malware that AoL doesn't pick up. You really ought to dump your recycle bin, esp if you have over 200megs or so in it. And cookies -- it wouldn't hurt to go into that and delete cookies that don't look like they're affiliated with web sites you frequent. Woody ============= Nlpakkala@aol.com writes: Thanks Woody, I was thinking that AOL had an adware program built in but I will check that out and if not will check the lavasoft site. I've been meaning to dump the recycle bin but every time I look at it I wonder "should that have really been deleted" and I planned to check those out but time gets away from me and I still haven't done it. I should probably just dump it and don't look back! By the way, would having lots of pictures in folders affect anything? When I'm off line things are not so slow. Nancy