lawrence, I also think that IchNison hit it on the head...The only time that I have had that much of a problem with Win not lasting longer than a month was when I used to install programs without shutting down other programs that where running or when I used to d/l every freeware/shareware prog I could get my hands on..

Also, gold eagle mentioned hardware.. also a possibility. Does it ever run right? If you have bad ram..that could cause the behavior you are describing...also are you overclocking? Could also lead to problems...

I have run Win98 and Win2k without having to redo them for well over a year on each machine.
Its all a matter of maintenance and following proper procedure. Defrag,Diskscan..using a proper uninstaller for those programs that you decide not to use after all...Shut down everything that is running except for Explorer and Systray(Win9x) and kill all programs that are resident in ur systemtray(beside the clock,lower right hand corner) before you install new progs..

As much as I slam M$ stuff..it is possible to keep one of their OS's running for at least 6 months..without it crashing constantly (or have I just been lucky?)

Good Luck