2 weeks ago my computer (Toshiba pentium 120 with 32 meg RAM) locked up. I thought scandisk and degrag - in Norton - would not work. Also Act 2000 would load but if I tried to open a new data base it would hang. I reformated hard drive and reinstalled everything. 2 days later same thing. I blamed NAV. Bought McAfee after reformating HD again. 4 days it happens again. Took computer to shop and all hardware checked out ok. Reformatted and reinstalled again and installed AVG - a free antivirus program. 6 days and AGAIN. Summary of what occurs. Scandisc is not hanging computer but runs so slow I thought it was - takes 10 minutes to initialize & 20-30 minutes to run. Defrag may be the same (waited 20 minutes in initializing) but works fine in safe mode. Act "hangs" on open new database. Format A: disk "hangs" on initiaize. All other pgms seem ok - MS Word, Winfax, IE Explorer seem fine.

I forgot to mention I have Windows 98se.

the best thing to do is to boot the system to safemode. Steps to get to safemode. Restart the computer.>> Tab, or press the F8 key up and down while the system is booting up. A startup menu screen should come up. C >> Choose Safemode, option #3. Test scandisk at this time to see if you are able to complete a scan. If so, then this means that it can be something in your startup that can be causing scandisk to stop or it can be something that is conflicting, such as a device driver, etc. Scandisk and Disk Defragmenter both will stop running if an application running in the background changes the disk contents. 1. Tap the F8 key while you are booting the computer to get the startup menu. 2. choose safe mode from this menu 3. when the desktop is loaded, run the desired application. 4. when you are finished, just restart the computer normally. else mail me

If it were me , I would go to Device Manager and and see if it shows any hardware conficts and when everything alse fails I love to do Load Default Bios. Don't know if these things will work but a couple of things to try

Check your bios and make sure your "bios" virus scan checker has not been selected or "turned on". I have friends that had similar problems like yours and it was due to the bios virus scanner being turned on.

You have to perform action fdisc /mbr,simple fdisc not cleanes up the master boot record,maby virus there?