Have a 300mhz PII, runing wn 98s/e 256 meg.

This problem just started recently.

Usually, buy not always, when I move the mouse or press a key to startup the computer in the moring (it's been left on over night), the system, will strart to come up (the monitor will be black, but display the task bar partially fill in, or the screen saver without icons, or just a black screen), and then lock up.

I then have to reboot, which may make it all the way through, or it might take several attempts as it gets further each time.

Usually, once it's up and running for the day, it will be ok for the rest of the day, even 2 days, but sometimes it will lockup again if it has gone idle (I have my power settings setup to turn the monitor off after 15 minutes, and the hard drives after an hour). This morning, shortly after the monitor had turned off, I moved the mouse and it locked up after displaying the screensaver without icons.

What I've done so far:
Run spyware programs.
Cleaned up the registry with a registry cleaning program.
Used compressed air to blow any dust off the boards.
Removed one of the double LoadPowerProfile commands from Startup.
Removed a suspicous ~POWERR~1 entry for Startup
Checked that the BIOS power management settings are disabled.
Removed an unnecessary Symantec program that ran everynight from the scheduler.
Asked for help on two other boards

Nothing has worked so far. Can anyone help?

Win9x needs to be restarted after heavy usage or running for longs periods of time. What you are describing is that the PC is low on resources which will cause the lockups.

SYSTEM RESOURCES FAQ

Well, I turned on my Norton System Doctor to monitor the resources, which never looked like they got too low, and I reset my "turn of monitor" time from 15 to 20 minutes, because the screensave stopped kicking in, and I've found that modifying the time has fixed it in the past. All my problems went away for 4 days. Then I had another problem which forced me rebood (my modem was connecting to my isp, but could not connect to any web site). I rebooted and everthing was working again. I went to the store, and when I came back a couple of hours later, I moved the mouse, the computer was displaying the wallpaper, some of the icons, a blacked out Norton System Doctor window, and was locked up :-(

Just a thought. I had a similar problem with my daughter's box. Hers was Video card related. Seems the video card fan was plugged up. When the screen saver would come and start using resources it would freeze
Mark

Interesting, but this old box doesn't have a video card fan. As far as I remember, just the two P/S fans, and the CPU fan. I changed the settings to not turn off the monitor and to display a black screen as a screensaver (LCD monitor). We'll see what happens now.

Here is the latest... Sometimes the p/c makes it through the night without locking up. It went 4 days last week. Usually, if it comes up in the morning it will come up through out the day, but a couple of times, it made it through the night, I used it, and then it froze coming out of idle an hour or two later. This time, because most of the task bar came up before it froze I noticed that the time was current. Therefore, I know it's not locking up while idle, but it's locking up as it is rebuilding the screen. Does that give anyone a clue? I had to reboot twice because the first time it locked up before displaying the icons.

Win98 wasn't designed to run for extended periods of time. It needs to be shutdown to clear the memory. If you want to run that PC like a server install WinNT/2K or Linux.

I agree with TheTerrorist. Win 98 is notorious for memory leaks. Funny thing - I used Norton Systemworks for a time to monitor such things, until I found that Systemworks' sensors were particularly bad for memory leaks themselves.

("memory leak" is a bit of a poor description. What is actually happening is that, although programs are supposed to release memory when they're no longer running, sometimes memory isn't actually released. Something like a small Norton sensor will use a bit of memory, not release it, use it again, and so on, until there is no longer any physical memory left to run in, and the system crashes.)

I would uninstall all Norton products and run their removal tool as well.
My bet would be that it will work a lot better after that!

Also why leave your system running overnight?
Fans are running. Bearings are spinning. parts wear out.

Although people will argue it either way, why have it running if you are not using it?
Kind of like your TV and lights where you live.