98se wont load

i am running win 98se on a pentium 450 with 256 mb ram. a few days ago every thing was working fine. an hour later, the machine is locked up. i soft boot and i get a message that windows failed to load and try again. when i do either it doesnt load or it takes 10 to 15 min then is unstable. i changed nothing in the mean time. it wont start in safe mode either. i can get to change it to safe mode but thats all.

any ideas where i can start looking for the problem(s)?

thanks. first time here posting. hope i did it right.

thomkat

 

How old is the hard drive, what brand, i'd look at your hard drive being the culprit, but first check everything in the bios and make sure its correct, if your overclocking then set it back to stock. last to see if its the hard drive you could try putting it in a cold place for a hour (some suggest a refrigerator), then putting it back in the compter quickley and seeing if it works ok for about 15mins or until warm then it is your drive.

 

thanks for the answer. i was afraid it might be the hard drive but my daughter had more patience than i did and let it set for about 15 min. it finally loaded. looked in mscofig in start up and there was about 25 .exe files that i have no idea where they came from. probably my teenage son! disabled those and ran spybot and cwshredder and spyware blaster and eliminated most of the problems, so far.

again, thanks for the help, i learn every time i'm here.

 

Great antidote for others (teenagers ) and everyone surfing the net.

Download, install and run these 3. Cleans out lots of crap.

Cleanup! http://www.stevengould.org/
CrapCleaner aka CCleaner http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4191
and EmpTemp http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=1575

Run them after EVERY net session, especially with others using your computer.

I run them daily. They are free, don't conflict with each other, and each finds stuff that the others miss. Bazza