Why doesmy computer die.

[Micom 2000]

I have an IBM Personal Computer 350 that is upgraded to an MMX 233.
I've always had the utmost confidence in it and fought off the numerous forceful "upgrades" to my Win98 SE system including the aggressisive Real Player, Adobe, and other programs who insisted on altering my set-up and who couldn't care dick about my actual system.

I was absent for 3 mo. a few years ago and when I returned the Cam-Camera alarm system was still functioning.

However, lately I find, even tho I exit the ISP and any programs that my machine might access, I get a curser after some timr of inactivity when I try to access my mqchine, and only a hardware reset makes it functional.

Since I am planning on travelling, this renders my computer useless as a security device. Since it did function before, this means some aggressive software marketing bastards screwed with my machine.

Any ideas on why this box stops functioning properly when left alone ?
I have disabled a long time ago the MS Task Manager.

Lawrence

 

[Jorg]

I have some vague memories about WIN 98 having an overflow bug that limits uptime to 180 days.

 

[Flack]

The original release of Windows 98 actually had a "49.7 day" uptime bug. Microsoft released a patch to fix it, and fixed the bug in SE.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q216641

I have had problems with my old 98 box running out of memory lately as well. Before I finally dismantled the box, I was only using it for a drive host (so it had file shares) and was running Trend's OfficeScan antivirus. Somehow between those two things, within a week or so 98 would be so low on memory that the tcp/ip stack would die and drop off the network, forcing a reboot.