Win98 File system

Try going to your system.ini file and under vcache, add the following: Maxvcache-6144 Reboot and see if that helps.
cpd

Very low on ram, and it is utilizing much caching to compensate, the C:\windows Temp file needs to be emptied, rt click the taskbar , select properties , start menu programs , and select empty my Documents file after making sure you are done with them.
Now rt click my computer, select properties , performance, virtual memory, and set it to 160 minimum and maximum (Remember to go back to letting Win manage if something goes wrong, or if you upgrade ram), if you can't operate in "safe mode" , nor do you understand it , stop right there as you will have to know how to recover if things foul up. If everything is a go , then don't allow Win to reboot on it's own, rather close all and shutdown normally, wait for 15 seconds and restart, this eleminates some issues that can crop up in this setting. Now the machine should handle the caching more effeciently, remember to lock it at 160, no more or no less , as it can hacve strange effects unless you give it a massive amount and then you will be right back where you started, another thing you can do if you have 2 hard drives , and that is place the Virtual memory on the other drive also (Two heads are better than one , reader heads that is)
Hope this helps , also you might look in the system config to see if there is something loading you don't want, you can view some of it by hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL , and see what is running, then cancel to get out of it.
Good luck