Monopolizing a forum with little forward progress becomes...mildly irritating after a while. ... The niche is crowded.

Trying to "fix" minor variations in Win98 memory utilization with few tools and limited experience is like...trying to influence the onset of Autumn by rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The situation is uncontrollable, and the efforts are doomed even in their own context.

The people here who know legacy MS Windows well (I'm not one of them,though I've used and even administered various flavors over the past decade) are as good as any I've met on the Net, and the advice here is far better than what you'll find on most legacy MS Windows dedicated sites. Grygus, Whysall, Norm, and Folkert have a lot of specific experience and understanding of the beast. The fact that all of them more-or-less despise Microsoft also speaks volumes. If they can't resolve your issues, you're not likely to have them solved by anyone

The question then becomes: Do I just deal with it and continue to use Win98? Do I use something else?

There are very few hard and fast rules here. Mostly it's a matter of social norms. Which you can't be expected to know unless someone tells you. So I'm telling you. Several people have indicated agreement with my comments.

There are some who are under the mistaken belief that a spot on the top ten most prolific posters list is some sort of honor. It's not, and more likely indicates an inability to control output. Respect comes from beneficial participation.

You should also be aware that there are those of us with LRPD addictions (that's the "new post" indicator). Finding yourself the principle contributor with multiple new posts in a forum, spawning multiple threads (you are fond of forking new threads, I'd suggest not doing so), makes it harder for those not interested in the discussion to simply ignore it.

Please consider this a friendly nudge in the right direction.

Frankly, I haven't seen a problem here; Karsten is making a request based on his own preferences, as we have done with him at times. My opinion is that your posting volume isn't excessive here.

Using this forum to ask questions and work through a problem is pretty much recommended use.

I found your adventures with Andre threads to be too slow moving and tedious for my taste (my attitude on misbehaving machines is, after all, "strip for parts now and ask questions later"), So I just picked at them now and then. I do not, however, begrudge you your threads nor consider them a violation of Social Norms, nor do I find it demeaning that others might wish to participate in them. Different people have different tastes, interests, delusions budgets and axes to grind.