Hello,
have installed tor, privoxy, then torbutton, then switchproxy does not seem to be working.
all the config files are the defaults, just refuses to work
thanks for any help

Saying "does not work" will not get you much help because it doesn't really say anything. Let's be methodical about it. Did you configure TOR and Privoxy? (Using default configuration files does not automagically mean it'll be working out of the box. It's not like with SSH where the default commented out sshd_config settings confirm defaults.) Can you confirm TOR and Privoxy actually run? (Did you ever check their logs?) Can you access Privoxy when you manually configure the proxy address in any browser and access the "http://p.p" address?

Instructions for Tor: http://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-unix.html.en

Have now got it working after looking a bit more

/etc/init.d tor start
/etc/init.d privoxy start

browser connection settings: 127.0.0.1 port 8118
to test it https://checktorproject.org
It seems to take ages to come up with some web pages.

That's the nature of tor. It is dependant on how many servers are online (and other factors). Sometimes it will be quick and other times slow. It is not ideal for downloading large files, it only anonymizes your traffic not speed it up.