Windows 98 Pausing/Freezing

I have an issue where when trying to run
Norton?s 2002 Disk Doctor, Scan Disk or the
Norton?s System Monitor, Windows 98 seems
to bog down and you have little or no feedback
as to what is happening for 5-10 mins when it
briefly returns to the foreground for a second
or two then bogs down again! Nortons WIn
Doctor seems to work fine though. I have
reinstalled Win 98 and checked and limited
the background tasks via MSCONIG to just
“explorer” only, with little or no effect. While
Win 98 is doing its background whatever you
can move the mouse pointer around but
clicking on windows or menus has no effect.
Any suggestions or advice would be gratefully
accepted. HELP!