I assume you've run Scandisk and defragment commands regularly, so I'll go to the next idea. My son has a Windows 98 system and I can think of two courses of action. One is to download Spybot anti-spyware. It's free shareware (they ask for a donation, but it's not required) and you can probably find it through http://www.spybot.com. Spybot identifies and removes more than 1500 known Internet spyware that can download into your system without you even knowing they are doing it. Even something as innocent as "adding smilies" or toolbars with search engines can greatly slow down your system. Spybot is easy to use, shows everything that it identifies, and gives you the option to delete all the spyware, or selected items. I think spyware should be treated the same as if it were a malicious virus because it is a royal pain in the a**. It is often loaded without permission and without your knowledge, it spys on your activity, and it can seriously slow down your system, even to the point of crashing. The second suggestion is to use Norton Utilities that is still compatible with Windows 98. I actually had a copy of Norton sitting around that was for Windows 3.1 or better, but with a few free updates from Norton's Website, it works fine. If you use the anti-virus, there is a fee to update it if you did not purchase Norton new. Norton utilities does a good job of checking to make sure your basic operating system and hardware is in good shape. It also looks for a lot of junk left in your registry, removes orphan programs that no longer work or are used, and does some other tricks to optimize your system. Often you can uninstall programs or spyware, but certain commands remain in your registry and are part of the boot up process. Norton will dispay exactly what can be removed safely and what you should not touch (although sometimes it identifies crap as important when it really isn't). Good luck. Fred
