Running either ScanDisk or Defrag, Pentium 3 Windows 98SE, I close everything so only Explorer and Systray are running. Message appears "program has restarted 10 times - close other running programs". How do I find what else is running ? This message occurs even when running in Safe Mode. Also, after running in Safe Mode,
I do a normal boot-up and my desktop icons are all in rows and columns, alphabetically arranged. I had them grouped by function , located on regions of the screen. Is this a default desktop display ? How do I get back my desktop as it was ?

The more I learn,  the more I realize how much there is to know.
Thanks for your help.

Try this page for a full answer.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/222469/en-us

To keep your desktop as you want it, if you are running active desktop.
Right click on a blank spot on the desktop. This brings up the context menu.
Under the heading "Active Desktop" check "Lock Desktop Items".
Of course, if you want to change anything after that you'll have to uncheck it in order to do so

   Scandisk and defrag should not effect the desktop in anyway.  The only way that I can think of that it would do that is if it cleans up a bad sector that happens to have that information in it.  That is highly unlikely.
   I am just saying that Scandisk is not directly responsible for that.
   Now the startup part could.  Win98 always had a problem with trying to get everything restarted after something like that.  I found that if I help my mouth just right, it would work.     I always suspected my slow computer or things happening in the background.

I used to have that same problem (it's been years since I was on anything older than win2K pro).  Turned out, there were some applications installed in the system services that actually polled in the background, and never showed up on the system tray, or anywhere else.  Norton Unerase is famous for causing this problem.  There wasn't anything wrong with the disk or its sectors, it's just that every time the applications poll, the defragger thinks you've re-written to the disk it's trying to read.

The simplest way to get around the issue is start up in Safe mode, and then do the scandisk/defrag ... only the minimal services get started, and you'll at least eliminate the idea that there's a problem with the disk or the OS.

lefty