Len,

Just to make things worse mate..................try running defrag in safe mode..............it will go a lot better with hardly anything running, but it is still a long process in Win98.

Look for "Diskeeper Lite", it is a lot more efficient, and you should be able to d/l a free copy. Win98 defrag is notorious

If you defrag in safe mode you will also defrag your AV pattern file which should make day to day running a bit better? Your AV, SpyBot etc also run better in safe mode, and have a better chance of catching things.

Cheers