I'm running a AMD 1.8, 512 Ram, with Win 98SE. I download a heck of a lot of stuff, unrar it, then either burn file or encode it then burn and then delete file. Files downloaded then deleted, can reach up to 100 G per month.

Because of this I make sure I defrag about every two days with Norton Speed Disk and format hard drive every two months.

Wonder what else I should be doing? Know I need to get a good registry cleaner, (because of installing and uninstalling to test burns), anyone recommend a good one that's not too complicated and easy to understand? (I don't really know what to do in that area).

Anything else I should be running? Getting sick of lock ups and crashes. I've also have Zone Alarm and AVG running too.

Thanks for help.

You should upgrade to Windows XP and stick SP1 on and then bring it up-to-date with the hotfixes. It's amazing how WinXP handles large files better than 98.

As for the registry cleaner i used to use one called regcleaner but i think Lazaa suggested one a while back that i remember being quite good but i seem to have lost it :(

Hi LikesWine!,

I d'l a bit but not quite that much :)

To be totally honest, and not saying it for the sake of it, the best thing you could do with the amount of work your PC is doing, especially if you are unraring most of it is .....

just upgrade to a, was going to say decent, but lets stick with better OS.

I used to put about 50gig a month through on Win2K, doing all the norm and running similar progs as you plus an ftp server on all the time, and had it had maximum up time of about 25 days at a time, and then only rebooted to give the thing a rest.

HTH, T.

Hi'ya LikesWine.

I don’t really agree with the above, most hacks and cracks for Windows are being made for Win2k and XP, with 98 they are all well known… Besides, Hackers cant be bothered with 95 & 98, its considered to be beneath them, and a waste of their ability, to write hacks for 95 & 98… Because of this, it is now safer to surf the net using 95/98 then 2k or XP. As a home user my advice is to go on using 98, for more on security Click Here (http://www.cdrom-guide.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=257158).

As for Fdisking, Formating, and Defraging your machine as often as you are doing, is not a good idea, you are only wearing out your hard disk out… And I’m assuming, you have setup your hard disk into more then one partition, with the first set to primary and the rest set to extended, if so… You’re setting yourself up for a fall. If your primary partition goes down on you, you will find that probably all of your partitions go as well, its better that you make all your partitions as primary partitions and set one of them to active, so if you lose your active primary partition, you dont end up losing all of your hard disk, all you lose is the one partition.

Probably the easiest way of doing the above is to use Partition Magic, use 30 day trial, do what you want to do then uninstall it (That’s if you don’t have PM).

As for Regediting tools I highly recommend Reg Organizer, both for new and for advanced users alike.

The mail program used is more important than the OS,if you are trying to avoid a virus.Most are written to attack the vulnerable MS Outlook.Use Eudora,and it will cut your chance of a virus by 90%!

win xp + sp1 is extremely stable.
for the internet, use spybot, spyblaster and adware 6 .......... all free