CPU/Fan go nuts since using SmartDefrag

[insanart]

Hello, I sincerely apologize if this question has already been answered, since I could not for the life of me get the search to work!

 

I have a 2.5 year old laptop that is used heavily for web design, photo storage and lots and lots of Photoshop (XPSP3, 120GB HD, 1.5MB RAM). I recently purchased an external hard drive so I could clean out all my photos/design files (and start storing them on the new drive instead of the laptop). It had been a while since a defrag and I had never used anything besides windows defrag before so I thought I'd try something new. I picked Smart Defrag at the the recommendation of Major Geeks.

 

Since running the program, my CPU and fan seem to be running erratically, and much more than it ever used to, even before I dumped the gigs of photos (it would run Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Firefox, Thunderbird, file browser, etc, etc. all at once with barely a whisper from the CPU). Twice since the Smart Defrag, the CPU ran so fast (and HOT!) that it nearly crashed the system. Once was while using Google Earth (other programs running - Thunderbird, plus AVG and Online Armor in background) and the second time was while on Firefox playing a flash based game (again, only Thunderbird, plus AVG and Online Armor in background running otherwise).

 

I did the defrag only first, then at the recommendation of the "analyze" function, I did the fast optimize. After I did that, I immediately noticed the fan running more, so I tried the "deep optimize", hoping that would help, even though "analyze" kept telling me to fast optimize. Since then, the two episodes where my laptop nearly caught fire have occurred...

 

What am I missing? or What have I done wrong? Please let me know if I can provide any more information...thanks!

 

- Sarah ;-)