IE 5.5 and MSN messenger 4.6 Crashing

i’ve got a win 98 machine and i’m having problems with my IE5.5. it keeps crashing. i’ve tried reverting to ie 5.0 and uninstalling msn messenger. i even repaired it 2 times. i went back to IE5.5 sp2. and it happened more often. so i uninstalled msn messenger completely. it only does it rarely now. could it be a heat issue? or something else? i’ve got a AMD thinderbird 1GHZ w/ 256 mb 133 Sdram, a 40 gb Maxtor. any suggestions would help. thanks, shadowatch