My system is 98SE.  Over the last three weeks I have had an exasperating problem that was originally intermittant and now is full time.  After installing the new SpyBot program and running it, things went well for 24 hours.  Then my desktop would not appear until a reboot.  The cursors were sticky.  IE then loaded a webpage in little dribbles during which time the cursor could not be moved.  Ad-aware removed 4 spys.  OLXPRS behaved normally.  I do not have a virus detected by Norton which was up to date but was now malfunctioning.  Autoupdate did not work well and could not be turned off.  Norton 2002 stopped loading on bootup.  I removed Norton NAV (not easy) using the Rnav2003.exe and reinstalled it  It loaded on bootup x 1 and then stopped.  It has been removed at the suggestion of RoadRunner and replaced with eZ Armor.  My cursors did not stick now except while a webpage loads.  This also made the desktop load in a reasonable time.  RoadRunner pinged my modem ad verified a fast connection.  I have removed SpyBot, defragged and scanned.  I have repaired IE.  The computer runs normally except while loading webpages.  As they load, the hard drive runs in short spurts instead of running continually.  Another irritation is that in safe mode, the CD drive disappears.  It is otherwise functional.  After opening in safe mode, I used "Auto-Arrainge to put the icons back, but now, I can not moved them manually.  I don't want to reformat and start from scratch onto an obsolescent OS.  Thanks in advance for any suggestions.