Ie 6.02.2600 stops responding

when surfing the net Ie 6 will stop allowing me to use links on a page unless I hit refresh ,then stop then refresh again, links will then become active for awhile again .running win98se and have plenty of memory and disk space .problem is recent and no I haven’t added or removed any programs recently .Just noticed that if you right click the link and open in new window it will open there and in the original window.