same thing happen to everything and the culprit is more than likely windows. windows 98 in particular is buggy as hell. Don't know why they can't get one right before they go and market another, but BIll Gates owns the world, so what can you do.
Of course, if it just stays open in the computer shop compared to your working on it all day, it is not surprising that it does not freeze up in the shop. I am no expert in these matters, but it sounds like you may be running out of resources as you work and or surf chat rooms during the day. Do you have plenty of memory?
That alone can make a HUGE difference in the performance as long as it is useable memory for the mb. 512 megs of ram for running Windows XP smoothly is not an exaggeration.
Check you resources and if they are low, the best thing to do is to remove items in your "start up". Many programs stick things in there that you don't need causing low resources.
Go to this site and it will explain what each item is for and what you need to keep there and what you can get rid of - this might help. http://www2.whidbey.net/djdenham/Uncheck.htm
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