Internet problems

I have been having difficulty with my Internet connection since i reinstalled the operating system (Win98) on my PC.
additional info - I now have a scanner and printer connected through a parallel cable since re-installing.

Thing is this:
When i try to acess a web page sometimes the webpage loads immediately and i can click through severeal hyperlinks and the PC's seems to function as it should. However, sometimes the PC's Broswer (I.E.6 SP1) locks and seems to be doing nothing even thoughi see the page complete option on the bottom left hand corner of the browser.
After about thirty seconds the page then starts to load and the little blue indicator moves along and then it loads the page again i click through another hyperlink or two and the same thing happens again.
I have tried re-installing Broswer, still no joy.
I have a network card which i don't use and have disabled in the systems settings.
What i want to know is this. Why when i type in IPCONFIG OR WINPCFG do i get afatal exception error message now?
Can anyone explain this? The browser seems to be functioning better with the network card disabled.

Thanks in advance for any replies.