whatever, it's no big deal anymore, now that i figured out how to fix it. just thought that LS had changed something, but it is probably just win 98, screwing with my mind. like west said "who knows why 9x does the things it does... it doesn't necessarily need a reason ;)". this is probably one of those things. could be anything from a bad hard disk area, to win update, to gates doing a scientific experiment on my mind.

BTW: my mouse drivers where having issues a month or so ago, and i decided to run scandisk. unfortunately, it got unplugged, and i never know the results. but when i booted up, the mouse worked fine. must have been something weird going on with the area of the disk where the drivers are stored(if they are all stored in the safe place), as you said earlier. no problem since this scan, although it's only been a month.