Frozen Windows (98) Pain

[jspargo]

I am running windows 98SE on a 400 MHz PII system with 128 MB RAM. I recently did a re-install of windows 98 (due to a system disk crash), then upgraded to SE. Sometime after I upgraded, I noticed that the system was "freezing". The symptoms are a complete freeze of everything on-screen, no response to CTRL-ALT-DEL (not even waiting a few minutes, so it isn't just slow to respond). It occurs randomly (and thankfully not that often) and doesn't seen to be associated with any single program or operation. I've had it freeze seconds after boot-up, 12 hours after boot-up, during file transfers, mid-screensaver with nothing else running, while reading e-mail, while running PowerPoint, etc.

My question is: Is there any way I can track down what is causing the problem? Is ther some sort of monitoring or logging software, some system log I can retrieve, or something that can give me a clue as to what is going on? As I said, it's more annoying than disasterous, so I'm not ready to do a clean install or something like that.

Thanks for any help or advice.

 

[Zorlod]

Is your system overclocked? Do you have the Ram running at the correct speed for the board?

 

[jspargo]

No overclocking or anything else out-of-the ordianry. The system has been remarkabley stable (for Windows 98). Until recently, I had OS crashes, but they were of the type that allowed CTRL-ALT-DEL and then a reboot. This complete non-reponsiveness is new

 

[KidGloves]

Well,
You might have a corrupt HDD. Try running a scandisk and look for any problems there. If it doenst show any, but it still freezes, Fdisk, Format, Reinstall.