HANG time...

In a bind at home with my brand spankin' new Win98SE install.  I've got a
problem with a folder that I was copying large files to.  During the last
copy, done from a DOS boot & using XCOPY, it seemed to hang, so I tried
Ctrl-C to kill it.  Waited 5 minutes, still no change, so I flicked off the
power.  Powered back on, but any attempt to access the folder that I was
copying the files into causes the system to hang immediately.  Again from
DOS boot, run a DIR on the folder lists the first several files I know were
copied completely, then the list stops, and the system hangs.  I tried a
DELTREE, same hang.  DOS SCANDISK hangs!  Norton's DOS NDD hangs!  Sheeze!
I am avoiding booting into Win98 for fear it will crumble the house of
cards.

Just before I go to reformat the drive, I remember that Norton Utilities has
DISKEDIT.  Without the /M (maintenance mode) switch, *it* hangs!  Try with
the /M switch, get the main DISKEDIT screen.  Go to the Advanced Recovery
Mode and did something that has it (apparently) scanning every dam*ed
cluster on my 30GB HD!  Supposedly / theoretically, this will find enough
information to automatically fix the problem.  I started it last night, and
this morning it wasn't even half-way through.  I estimate it will take 33
HOURS to complete.  I guess that's one way to give the new hard drive a
burn-in test!  I'd give more details on what's on the DISKEDIT screen, but
since I don't have internet access at home right now, and I'm doing this
from work.

FWIW, this PC is 9 years old, has 128 MB ram, 30GB HD formatted to FAT32,
and Win98SE was scratch-installed (by me).  I would like to avoid another
scratch install, since getting it to this point was a total PITA and
consumed enormous amounts of time, but I wouldn't lose anything I couldn't
otherwise recover from backups.

Any ideas?  If not, can anyone recommend websites better able to handle
queries like this one?

TIA, db