Thanks for the directions. The problem was, the page stalled before any icons came on the screen. I had to kill Netscape twice just to regain control.
sounds like you have too many things running in the background on your computer.
get to a stopping point, where you have everything you need to have saved, and hit CTL-ALT-Del, and a list of what is running will come up. If you have Win98, there are only 2 programs necessary to be running in the background.
If you clean up your computer, it will run a lot faster and better.
a good site to go to is :
http://www.mycomputershow.com/ Ira Wilsker is excellent, and following his directions on cleaning up your startup will make your computer run markedly better.