slow boot and fragmented io.sys file

Running Win98SE on P2 Celeron 300 mhz 64meg ram. for 2 months I’ve had slow 2min boot with busy hard drive. Norton defrag shows io.sys fragmented (only file that is). Could this be the cause? How would I copy, move, unfragment io.sys (or is this a stupid idea)? I’m an ordinary pc user.