I rest my case 
Scylla, do you have more than 1 stick of RAM in the computer? If so, pull one and run the computer without it. Then try running the computer with the other one. Might help with figuring out if it’s a particular stick of RAM, or even the RAM at all.
Try this. Note follow these instructions exactly. If you make a mistake it can crash the OS for real.
#1. Restart in MS-DOS mode. You must restart not just bring up a command prompt.
#2. type in cd \ then hit enter
#3. type in dir *.tmp /s/p then hit enter (note, this can take some time)
#4. write down the directories that have *.tmp files listed
#5. us cd to switch to the directory where the tmp files are. EX. cd c:\windows emp
#6. once you are in the correct directory type in del *.tmp then hit enter. Note, if you didn’t know, del is a delete command so be careful with it.
#7. Repeat 5 and 6 untill all the tmp files are gone.
#8. type in win and hit enter to restart windows.
#9. Restart the machine and as soon as you see the starting win 98 text hit the F5 key. This should bring up a boot option menu. Choose the option to start in safe mode.
#10. Once you are in safe mode got to start - programs - accessories - system tools - disk derfragmenter. Run it. Go see a movie, it’s going to run for a long time. Once the defrag is done shut down the machine. Restart it and see what happens.
FYI, the whole point of this is to get rid of any temporary files that windows might not have cleaned up properly. Running defrag in safe mode defrags the swap file area of the Hard disk. If you defrag running windows normally it does not hit the swap file area because it is in use.
HTH
Slee
I’d say the same as I usually say, get a computer maintenance program that can clean
& defrag not only your HD, but your registry too. I use System Suite 2000 under Me, but
there are others you can use. A program like that can find out what it is right away.
Then go to someplace like www.mwave.com where you can specify exactly what parts you want and have them build it. You can get a much better machine for the money this way (as far as the cost of the parts anyway, I don’t know how much they charge for assembly & test).
Did you run Scandisk from DOS or Windows? The Windows version doesn’t always clearly indicate when it finds problems with a drive.
To run in DOS, go to Start|Shut Down and select Restart the computer in MS-DOS Mode. When you get to the prompt, type scandisk c: /AUTOFIX /NOSAVE and hit Enter. Select Yes when it asks to run the Surface Scan. This will take a long time, so you might want to go make a sandwich or wax the car or something.
When it’s done, see if there are any black B’s on the display. If so then there are bad sectors on your hard drive. Back up your data immediately and get a new drive.
If the surface scan comes up clean then there’s probably a failure in one of your other components. RAM is the most likely suspect, as some posters have mentioned.
I think Number’s suggestion is very good. I have a “problem child” under my care which exhibited the same behavior and a surface scan largely corrected the problem.
If you’ve reinstalled your OS after the problem arose, and a surface scan identifies bad sectors, you might want to consider reinstalling yet again. In my own case the system registry was damaged irreparably.
In addition to being about as stable as Joan Crawford after a half a dozen martinis, Windows 98 also fails to effectively back up its own registry. Once you’ve fixed all this nonsense, I strongly recommend that you go out and find a decent, free registry backup program.
I forgot if W98 uses Restore. But Yesterday I looked at my Me machine & I noticed that with a 20 gig HD,
Restore used about 2.4 gig of it (Its supposed to use around 12% of a hd).
My primary partition was only 5 gig, so this ate up ALOT of it…grrrrr…
So I sent the Restore slider to the left, unabled Restore,
restarted, abled Restore & finally got back my HD space 
I tried Sleestak’s suggestion last night.
I started running the defrag in safe mode about 9pm. It was so slow, it was only 40% done when I left for work this morning. My wife called about an hour ago and said there’s a “general protection fault” and that it’s “locked up.”
Grrr.
Maybe I’ll go buy some new memory, or a new computer.
They have a nice HP on sale at Staples for just under a grand.
That sounds like bad memory to me. I got a bad PC133 stick a while back, and promptly started getting general protection faults when running defrag or scandisk. There is a free program called memtest86 (http://www.teresaudio.com/memtest86/) which you can use to test your memory and see if it’s bad.
Or you can just buy a new computer.
Scylla, you ever defrag the registry?
I just got a new computer.
Darn, I was just about to post the right answer.
People, things work fine once everything is loaded, it just takes forever to load. This is clearly a hard drive problem (either the drive itself, the way it’s configured, or the data on it). Memory problems cause instability, not slowness (unless the memory is bad enough that the system doesn’t recognize it as such and starts using more paging space).
The first thing I would check is under the device manager, see if it’s reporting any problems, and start “futzing” with the settings (if dma is turned on, try it with dma turned off, or vica versa, etc). THIS is the sort of settings change that can turn a 2 minute boot into a 15 minute boot instantly.
-lv
It had stopped working, and I kep getting the blue screen of death.
Now that you have bought a new computer, you have nothing to lose by attempting sledgehammer solutions to get the old one going again. Just grit your teeth and (slowly) back up and transfer any essential data before you start.
From the symptoms described above, this installation of Windows sounds somewhat terminal, particulrly if you reinstalled it without wiping the previous one. It’s possible that some embedded eroors were not ironed out and have bobbed up again. I would be reformatting the drive, checking it with a surface scan of your choice, then giving Windows a totally fresh installation, with nothing else on the drive to distract it. If it still misbehaves, then indeed you have a hardware problem.
What I want to do is put the old hard drive in the new computer as an additional drive.
I tried, but I think I got the jumpers wrong, and the computer wasn’t starting right.
I can’t find any documentation on this stinky old Maxtor drive.
I got crap in there I need to get at, too.
I’ll jump on the dogpile … per what others have mentioned the media surface on the hard drive is probably partially damaged in some fashion and the OS’s (repeated) attempts to read in data that is verifiable is bringing the system to it’s knees. If there are damaged OS binaries they will only be adding to the problem. You need to save your data ASAP and get a new 20 gig hard drive for $ 65.00 or so and then re-install windows fresh. Do not copy the currently installed version to a new hard disk.
Maxtors web site will give you jumper allocation by model # even for older drives. www.maxtor.com
Your drive model # can probably be found listed here. If not use the maxtor search engine.
Even if you get the jumpers right, you have to put them on the cable right & set the bios
to see them correctly. Then it should be fine.
Maybe you should just put it back in the original computer & boot with a dos startup disk & transfer
files to a floppy?