I have an IBM TP760EL with a 3 Gig drive and win98 that is giving me fits. I have used this machine for about 3 years with no problem except that lately it is coming up with "long file name errors" and other assorted failures at boot up.  What is happening is that some how characters are being added to the names of directories, never to file names. For example (Windows ' ' ) . In DOS it will look the same with the <DIR> extension. Once or twice it has added some other character, but it is usually the single quotation mark.
   Have run Mcaffe and CA anti virus with no hits.  Have used another drive (2.1 gig) with same results.
   I think it is noise in the system because when I take it all apart and re-assemble it "seems" better for a while.  But it always comes back.
   Any and all help would be apprecitated.  TIA!
  jfh

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