Bullfrog -

The most common cause of what you describe is probably a shortage of temp space on your hard drive. You indicated that you have 12GB free, which is quite a bit on a 30GB drive, but not really much headroom on a 120GB, because of the way Windows allocates/allows temp space to be used.

Windows normally will only use about 10% of hard drive free space for all temp uses. In Win98, especially, some of the temp functions are limited to 10% of the largest unfragmented free area on the drive. There are a number of "special purpose" temp files, each of which can have its own much smaller limit on the amount of space it can use - and most of these individual temp functions are not well documented.

You indicated that you've cleaned up temp files. I assume you used the "best" method, which is Start - Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Disk Cleanup. This is usually good, but can miss "dead" temps, so in problem cases it's also a good idea to (and you may have) do a search for *.tmp and for ~*.* files, either using Win Explorer - Tools - Find, or "DIR *.tmp/s" and "DIR ~*.*/s" in a Command/DOS window. Any .tmp that Windows will let you delete can be safely deleted - if you do it while Windows is running. Just don't toss your good cookies.

Temp resources can also be eaten by "dead" jobs in a print spool - just another thing to check.

You indicate that you use desktop icons to open individual documents. We'll assume that you've right-clicked a couple, checked Properties and verified that the shortcuts point directly to their target files (and that the files are still where they're supposed to be). Sometimes you can end up with shortcuts to shortcuts instead of direct paths.

When you "shortcut" to a document or spreadsheet, Windows has to look up what program to use to open it, so you may want to check your "File Associations." In Win Explorer, View - Folder Options - File Types tab.

If you have "many" icons, you may have run up against
the "MaxCachedIcons" limit, or your icon cache may just be scrambled. Most setups don't have a problem with 50 or 60 icons on the desktop, but it's possible to run out of space with fewer, and likely if you have very many more than that.

The simplest check on this is to attempt a rebuild of the icon cache. Start - Settings - Control Panel - Display - Effects, (or just right click a blank space on the desktop) and click or unclick "Use large icons." Click "Apply" and then change the icons size back to what it was and click "Apply" again. This forces Windows to rebuild the cache (twice) and may "bring the icons back to life."

If rebuilding the icon cache helps, you can increase the temp space the cache is allowed to use. Instructions for doing this can be found in Mickey'$ Knowledge Base articles:

132668: Icons Randomly Change to Different Icons

133733: Icons Displayed Incorrectly in Control Panel

The symptoms described are not exactly what you're seeing, but the fix may be the one you need. These require editing the Registry, so be careful. The linked articles have links to "how to edit the Registry" articles if you're not confident without help.

If the icon cache rebuilds itself successfully, I would be reluctant to edit the cache size, unless the problem comes back.

You can "rebuild" Windows in Control Panel - Add/Remove Software - Windows Setup, without a "reinstall." Your problem is that it may ask for the installation disk if there's a serious problem, and when it asks it can "lock up" if you don't have it. IF you find the Office install disk, you should be able to do a similar "rebuild" of Office from it.

No guarantees on any of this, but it's the best I can think of now.

Note: Mickey doesn't make full (reinstall) program disks available for download - only the upgrades. If your machine came "preloaded" the OS disk(s) may be labeled something other than "Windows CD" although usually the oem "Office" disks have the Mickey labels so they can show off their "Genuine Microsoft hologram" - just in case you've forgotten what they look like.

John