Recently I had cause to do a clean re-install of Win98SE (PIII 450 384Meg RAM). Things worked fine for a few weeks, then, occassionaly, when I would click on menu item (or select it and press ENTER - it's not a MOUSE only problem) nothing would happen for maybe 3 to 5 seconds, then the desired command would execute. During this delay, I am unable to move the cursor at all - it's as if the machine locked up, but after a few seconds, the command would execute OK. This has happened in OUTLOOK, IE, and virtually every other program I have.
When I am experiencing the problem, if I do a Control-Alt-Delete (after I regain cursor control, of course) there are no un-expected processes running. I run Norton AntiVirus (update it daily) and AdAwareSE, but find no mal-ware. I have all the Win98 updates applied. I have done a clean boot (disabling all non-essential startup processes), and still had the problem.
I thought maybe it was a memory problem, and the delay was caused by Windows having to swap out massive amounts of data to the swap file, but I ran a memory test that I found on the net, and the program claims all my RAM is good.
This is extremely intermittent, but usually when it does it once, it will do it again during the same session.
Any suggestions are appreciated.
Mike