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To be honest Zella, it just sounds like the odd occasion when a really big file is being written to disk, so your computer stops what it's doing for a little bit. Maybe it's the cache file being cleaned up (this is a file that your computer uses to hold stuff temporarily when you try to do too many things at one to fit into memory).

Note that this is pretty normal behaviour.
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On top of this possibility, you might want to consider try defraging your harddrive.  After long periods of computer use, the placement of files on the computer have a tendency to get scattered as parts of the drive are erased and rewritten to.  As a result, files that depend interacting with each other may end up on other ends of your harddrive. By defraging your drive, you're basically telling your computer to reorganize where things are written on the harddrive so things will run smoother.

To access the defragmenter, simply click on Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools, then click on your defrag program (in windows it's generally called "Disk Defragmenter").  Make sure you close down other programs before you do this, and make sure you have plenty of time as it can take a couple hours depending on the size of your drive and how fragmented it is.

Hideous Twit

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A full C: drive is a possible cause of problems.  Although you use your D: drive for most things, the C: drive is where the system page file is located.  If C: gets full, Windows does not have the necessary disk space required for the page file, which results in slow downs, hang-ups, total freezes, and overall poor performance.  A good rule of thumb is to keep at least 500MB to 1GB of free space on the C: drive at all times.

Also, for those of you running any Win9x OS, (that includes WinME), don't add over 384MB of memory to your system.  Win9X kernel does not manage memory well, and you will actually see a DECREASE in system performance by going above this.  In addition, going over 512MB with Win9x will likely cause your system to become unstable.
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Yeah, I'm stuck with windows 98.  I do have a 6 gig D drive, so that helps a lot.  Now for the BIG question...where can I find a site to host MY pictures for free that will also "Let" me post them as an avatar without deleting them after 20 minutes?! (Like geocities and angel fire do) >:(

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Well, you have Fortunecity.com, Bravenet.com, Homestead.com, clanpages.com, 50megs.com, crosswinds.net...
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Sadly, I tried them all and...same thing...pictures lasts for a while then....gone :(

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OK, since Zella got several intelligent-sounding answers to her question, let me throw mine in the mix as well.  Maybe Kryllith or Thundervamp can help me.  My pain-in-the-neck brother the computer geek can never seem to find the time to help me.


I'm using an IBM Aptiva re-build, running Windows '98. (don't laugh, it was cheap).  Every once in a while, the whole thing locks up.  I cannot move my mouse, Ctrl+Alt+Del does not work, nor do any of my keys.  My only option is to manually shut the thing off, or cut the power.  After waiting about one minute, turn it back on, and there is no problems (I just have to wait an extra minute for it to scan for errors since I 'did not shut down Windows properly').  If I am online when it happens, it does not disconnect me.  I will stay online, unable to do anything till I reboot.

I regularly clear out my cookies and temporary internet files.

Is there anything else I can do to prevent this happening?  Or do I just have to put up with it till I get a better system?

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Welcome to the wonderful world of microsoft. :P  Sadly this tend to be a common problem (in some cases you might even get what's referred to as the "Blue Screen of Death".)  Often times the problem is a result of resource drain.  Sometimes you can cntl-alt-del from this and it will ask you to shut down some programs, at which point it will either work properly and free up resources, or it will just get stuck completely.) Course it can just be mean and freeze up without telling you too :P

Disk errors, of course, can be another problem.  If all the scandisk runs you've done lately have only scan the files themselves, then you might want to do a surface scan (it takes a bloody long time though, so do it when you're planning on watching tv, reading a book, doing your taxes... whatever).

Another thing that may cause difficulties is problems in your registry, in which case you might want to go into your command prompt and try doing a /scanreg restore. Course, if you've been having this problem for quite some time, you might not be able to restore your registry this way (you can only go back so far)...

Kryllith  

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Sadly, I tried them all and...same thing...pictures lasts for a while then....gone :(
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Try opening a community at communities.msn.com and then putting the pic you want in the picture section. I've had people from my community do this for their profile pics and it seems to work just time.

Kryllith

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Try opening a community at communities.msn.com and then putting the pic you want in the picture section. I've had people from my community do this for their profile pics and it seems to work just time.

Kryllith
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I tried that and it worked....for about 16 hours...then the pic diappeared again :(