Only if everything else fails. By all means, try EVERYTHING else first before doing that. I only mentioned it because I had assumed it had been recommended to you by another poster when your reply mentioned you didn't have an install disk.
I myself have reinstalled WinME many times as well as having wiped many a drive and reinstalled every type of Windows OS. But then, I work on computers of all types and am very comfortable with the process.
I would recommend to you to try and clean things up yourself and only go so far as to re-install WinME from the setup file I mentioned earlier. It will not destroy any of your data. It will only refresh the Windows install and might actually fix yor problem.
Just an update if you're interested!
I never could get scan disk to run completely so I decided to live dangerously (for me!) and F8'd. I went into safe mode after 4 tries and finally ran scan disk to completion.
So far, so good! I talked to son last night and he's decided to give me XP for Christmas.
Now that my computer isn't freezing up like it was, I'll delete cookies. (It's also running faster!)
The only remaining question I have is which browser is best for someone like me. Mozilla or Firefox?