reinstalling W98

I'm hoping I can get some advice on this. My computer has been running slowly (I mean that as I type this, the letters appear after I strike them). When I scroll, it's very choppy. I called Dell about this problem and the first time they advised me to download Ad-Aware and clean out my computer. This was about two months ago and it worked. Last week, it started again and running the Ad-Aware scan did not seem to help. I called Dell again and now they tell me that I have spyware somewhere in my computer and it has to be cleaned out completely. This means that I have to take everything off and then reinstall everything again. It also means that everything that I have downloaded in 4 years is going to be removed too. This seems to me to be an overwhelming task (just my list of favorites alone is huge). Does anyone have an opinion about whether or not I should do this? I get the slowdown when I'm on line. It doesn't seem to effect my gaming or when I use any other off line programs. I was also told that I should get a new Norton Anti-Virus. It seems that the one I have isn't doing the job anymore (who knew that you needed to update this thing). As you can tell I'm not too savvy when it comes to computers and the thought of starting over from scratch scares me. <img border="0" alt="" title="" src="graemlins/cry.gif" /> I mean I'm going to have to put in programs that were already on my computer when I got it. Opinions please <img border="0" alt="" title="" src="graemlins/woozy.gif" />

Did you update the adaware data files? And then run it again. That might help. Are your Norton data files up to date? Again, that might help if you then do a virus check. What Norton are you using?

Bea, The guy from Dell told me to get a new Norton, which I will do. I don't know what I have, it came with the machine. Do you know how to update the Ad-Aware date files?

fil I know this sounds silly but when was the last time you did a scan disk and defragged your hard drive? Also do you leave your computer on all the time or turn it on each day? I'll be honest, I've never heard of having to reformat a drive in order to get it to run faster - but that doesn't mean it isn't so.

Have you ever deleted all your *TEMP files? Or cleared out the *CACHE ?? That stuff really clogs up your space & slows things down.
Win98 will do a back-up of all your existing programs & files, just have a LOT of floppies if you don't have a CD Burner.

If the problem is due to spyware, what Bea suggests should help. If not, and you're not seeing any slowdown in any other computer function, then it may be that your browser needs a fresh install. If the slowdown is due to a virus, and your Norton isn't detecting it, then a reformat may be the only sure way of getting rid of it.

I don't know about you guys & gals but I had to uninstall Norton because it slowed my computer to a crawl when I was online. Drove me nuts! I guess my 500mhz Celeron just can't handle the workload, but have you tried uninstalling Norton temporarily and see what happens?

Cheryl

Thanks for all the suggestions people, I'll try scan disk and defragging Syd, Granny, don't know where CACHE is, Jenny, my daughter recently (2 or 3 months) installed Earthlink's new Total Access browser. I forgot to say that before this reinstalling issue came up, the Dell rep that I spoke to made me run a new setup.exe. It took about 45 minutes and it didn't work and they told me that that was the last resort before a complete reinstall. He said that my Dell L500 didn't have enough room for all of the spyware "things" (you notice my complete grasp of computerese), but I'll try all of these things first because I don't want to reinstall. I don't even know if I have all the disks to do it. Thanks again everybody.

Hi fildil,

If you right click your mouse while your cursor is over the "My Computer" icon and then click on properties, then click on the performance tab, what does it say for your % of resources that are free? Anything below around 40% makes the OS a bit sluggish and unstable. Having browser windows open uses up quite a bit of system resources which might be making it drop low.

lakerz, I do check on my performace % from time to time, right now it is 67%. I'v really never seen it go really low.