Hello, not only is it freezing outside my computer is freezing up all the time. I'm running win98se, 500mhz, and a AMD Athalon. When ever I go to right click anything it freezes for about 5 to 10 seconds before it allows me to do anything. Also all the time when I'm on the internet it will freeze up for like 20 to 30 seconds every couple minutes. It's starting to get real annoying does anyone have any ideas or should just reformat and move up to win2000 Pro. Also I'm not able to change my wallpaper even the ones that come with win98 it just stays as a white background. Please help me before I get to angry at the pc and tie the darn thing to my bumber.

Got a pile of questions for you....

Do you run updated virus scanners and spyware scanners? Do you have a firewall? Did you do anything with your system before the problem started and what have you done to try to fix it? Have you installed any new software or hardware lately?

It sounds like you have a resource hog running in the background and the most likely culprit would be some kind of malware. I would check for this first and then check for legit programs that may simply be trying to hard. You could do this by going into msconfig and unchecking almost everything in Startup and then seeing how it runs. If the problem goes away, keep rebooting, but add one item in Startup each time until the problem happens again, that will tell you which is the problem program.

Here is a link to find out what programs are:
http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_pages/startup_full.htm

You could also check what you have in the background by running a program that will report on that and then check to see what is necessary and what isn't. Generally, I believe the only things essential for a minimal install is Explorer and Systray.

And by the way, I hear it is almost 30 degrees out there, what do you mean its freezing? That is a heat wave.

Good luck,
Budfred

When I left for work this morning it was 2 degrees out and I forgot to bring twelve pack of pop in last night from grocery shopping well you can imagine what happened. Well lets see I have norton 2002 system works and I do full virus scans and updates weekly and I've already gotten everything out of my startup except for a few things that are legit programs but I'll try it with out them. As of installing anything, the last thing I installed was norton system works and that was months ago the only changes I've made is unistalling programs that are just stuff I've downloaded in the past.
No I do not have a firewall, no spyware scanners, the only hardware I've put in recently is just more memory.
I'm not at the computer I'm having problems with so I'll have to try getting rid of more startup programs later.

I would urge you to get Spybot Search & Destroy to make sure that spyware isn't slowing things down before you remove any other programs. The other possibility is that some of your RAM may be bad. There is a program called MemDoc (or DocMem, I am not at home so I don't have the link handy to check) that can test the RAM for you.

You can get Spybot through a link on mjc's page of links here:

http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15179

Sorry to here about the mess this AM...

Budfred

Go Vikings! :(

Hmmmmmmmm.....how about trying things out in SAFEMODE and see if the problems go bye bye? ;)

Try a latest virus scan. Also remove the background applications from the startup by running "System Configurations Utility" (Type MSCONFIG in the Start > Run dialog box). Sounds to be a "insufficient resources" problem. Improve the system resources.

Have you tried disabling IDE Busmastering from the BIOS, disabling DMA for your HardDisk from the device manager. The newly added Memory could be the culprit as well, remove it and try with the old one.
It can be anything though, messed up registry, software utilities, ill windows. Check for errors and Defragment the HardDrive if possible.