Run the following Disk Cleanup utility: CleanUp! 4.50, from:
http://www.stevengould.org
Download, update, and run the following two anti-spyware applications:
Spybot Search & Destroy version1.4
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html
AdAware Personal SE -
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
Allow each to fix items that are identified.
Run this online scan and allow it to fix items that are identified.
http://housecall.trendmicro.com
The last 2 times I ran Defrag on my hard drive it never gets past 12%
Disk Defrag is a very "polite" utility in Win98. Since its "defragmenting" function moves various bits of data, it could cause difficulty to any application or routine that happened to be running actively. Therefore, Disk Defrag will always stop whenever it detects a change on the Hard Drive or any program becoming active, Disk defragment will then wait, and only resume its work after the running program has stopped and no changes to the Hard Drive have occurred for a set period of time. This can cause an endless delay loop if various legitimate programs are set to periodically attempt to update, or if some malware is trying to access the internet.
Hopefully, you will have eliminated any malware activity by running the above utilities.
(let us know if you continue to have malware related difficulties so we can give you additional suggestions/resources)
However, there are still legitimate programs that may attempt to update at an inconvenient time which may occur during the Defrag process.
To avoid these "legitimate" interuptions, reboot your machine into SAFE Mode.
In SAFE Mode run Scan Disk prior to running Disk Defrag
Next Run Disk Defrag.
Additionally….
Win98 Disk Defrag is not as good a utility as the Disk Defrag provided in the otherwise useless Win ME.
Happily, Win ME Disk Defrag run on Win98 machines and does a much better job of Disk Defragmenting in a much shorter period of time than the native Win98 utility.
Note: The following includes a hyperlink to a direct download. If you do not "trust" this Member (dough) then you may not want to "click" on the download. "I am Dough and have used this download to benefit many machines running Win98 and WinME. Ask Around amongst other Members if you are still unsure."
USE THE IMPROVED WINME DEFRAG UTILITY IN WIN9X
Microsoft shipped WinME with an improved version of Defrag. It's much faster than the stock version that shipped with Windows 95 or 98. Reports from around the net indicate that it is safe to use the WinME Defrag utility in previous 32-bit consumer versions of Windows (Win95 and Win98). If you choose to use it …
1. Download WinME_Defragto a temporary directory.
2. Find your stock version of DEFRAG.EXE in your %WINDIR%, usually C:\Windows.
3. Right-click it and select Rename from the menu, and rename it to DEFRAG_OLD.EXE.
4. Now unzip WinME Defrag to that temporary directory and rename it to DEFRAG.EXE.
5. Move it to your C:\Windows directory, and you're done.
If for some reason, the new WinME Defrag doesn't work, you can simply delete WinME Defrag, rename the original, stock version back to DEFRAG.EXE again and you're back in business.
One last tip: If you're having trouble running Defrag, either version, boot into Safe Mode, run Scandisk first, and then run Defrag. Actually, it's a good idea to do this occasionally as it defragments the one file that can't be defragmented in normal Windows, your swap file.
If you don’t like to click on a direct download as above, WinMe_defrag.zip can be found:
Still available by email from PotentProducts, here:
http://www.potentproducts.com/download/ms/windowsme.html
Here's a MS knowledge base article about Defrag in Win98 that may add some information.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/222469