System Hangs for a while

It may be a virtual memory problem.

1. Clean up your hard drive. Delete any unneeded files.
a. Windows\Temp any file over 1 week old is not needed.
b. temporary internet files. These reside in different places for different browsers.

2. Scandisk and defrag!

3. Get Lavasofts adaware software, and check your system for spyware programs.

4. Reduce the number of programs that run in the background. Many programs place quick start icons in the system tray. Part of the programis always running. Close and dissable any that you don't take advantage of on a daily basis.
You can use msconfig to disable start-up programs.

5. Double your actual memory. W98 runs better with 128 - 196MB of ram.

6. Use a registry cleaner utility to clean out some of the garbage that builds up over time.
You can download Regclean form Microsoft, use Notron Win Doctor, or Ontrack Fix-It.
There are numerous other free-ware utilities, but I have not used them myself.

That should clean up your system and improve performance.

Check your CPU usage. I had this issue recently and found that the CPU was running at 100% all the time. Going into the task manager doesn't always reveal everything that's running so get a utitility like Bionic CPU or Win 98 task manager (an NT/2000 like task manager). What it turned out to be was Norton System Works. The user had done a 1-Step clean-up and whatever changes Norton made were causing the CPU to constantly run some process that used up 100% of the CPU resources. After uninstally System Works the CPU usage dropped back down to the 20% to 30% range and everything worked fine. I then re-installed System Works and the CPU usage remained between 20% to 30%. Very acceptable. I told the user not to run the 1-Step clean-up again andthe PC is still operating acceptably.

Bob Hofman