Sorry about not coming back sooner, I simply couldn't get on the Mudcat for the last 4 days. Elsewhere in the world, yes, just not the 'cat.
Thank you for your assistance and advice. I thought some might be
interested in my findings, as it might help others in a similar position. (Irritated, frustrated, etc.)

Whatever I had, it did two things. ( I'm on dial-up, by the way.)   First, it changed the phone # on the connection. I'd hate to be the subscriber on the # that it changed them to!
Secondly, it buggered up modems. Three of them, two straight out of the box. The first sign was that the little speaker stopped working, followed by the whole thing not working. It's hard to understand that a modem that you put in 5mins ago is no longer working.
I found that CreAtive CD-Roms do not like copy (burned) disks. Sometimes they just won't read them. Despite CD-Roms' reliability, I'll only use burners in future.

When the burned disk is full, such as my back-up CD of W98SE, it takes very little scuffing to make it that it won't load all the files. And they even scuff on cardboard!

It pays to have a full computer to rob from. I swapped Ram, CD-Rom, HD, and modem from mine. And Her Indoors complains because I have 3 computers?
It pays to install thing like soundcards, modems etc., one at a time, rebooting between units. As John says above.

The final solution, well, so far anyway, was:
Put in yet another HD,    full format from A:,    reset the partitions,    remove and replace
the battery to clear the CMOS,    disconnect the ZipDrive,   remove the (dead, although
new) modem,    reset the CMOS date,    reinstall Windows,    reinstall IE from a cover disk ( my WinCD IE3 is too old to update or even work),   install yet another new modem and driver,   reconnect the ZipDrive,    install drivers for the motherboard, keyboard,
printer, etc, install the viruskiller and firewall. About 3 hours loading programs.

This has worked, nearly perfectly, for the last 40 dial-ups, and although it doesn't sound much, it made for a long, frustrating time, particularly while I was finding out about CreAtive CDs and scuffed disks. Oh, and dirty lasers, too. And how to format 7 times.

I have downloaded but not yet used the Seagate formatter that John suggested above. That was to be my next move, and is now another string to my bow. The viruskiller says there is no infection. (Hah) And this Net box is staying stripped to the minimum. And
discontiguous to my main box.

Prices? Second-hand 4gig HDs are about US$8, in good order. Modems US$8.
I found new W2000 Professional OSs at US$40, and I'm open to suggestion on that, considering the times. XPPro is about US$250, here. Cheaper bundled with a computer, but that makes it total about 2.5 weeks wages, and I don't do much with this compter but go on the net.
I'd hate to pay for this work to be done by a professional, it would have been cheaper to buy a new computer. And then what would I have done with this P41.7? And what would I have learned? Anyway, I fix things for a living. It is a hard attitude to break, because I don't like throwing 2-year-old computers away.    Regards,   Chris.

Oh yes. I've been unable as yet to use the Windows Update site. Not sure why.