I'm running Office 2000 and Windows 98. Excel crashes badly when I save.
Two Ctrl-Alt-Deletes get me as far as "exit excel" but that doesn't work. I
always have to reboot.

I have reloaded Windows 98 twice. I have removed Office 2000 completely and
then reloaded it, again twice.

I don't have antivirus software on this machine. Other machines with
antivirus aren't detecting any virus activity on my zip disk files. I at
least have a router and I don't use MS Outlook, which cuts down on viral
attacks. Yahoo mail screens incoming email files.

Is there some file, some kind of normal.dot, that is getting through? I"ve
already dealt with MS Word's normal.dot and now I erase the thing on sight.
I someday want to write an autoexec.bat line that erases normal.dot when
booting up every day.

Is some third party software somehow reaching across and whacking Excel?

I'm low on money, so what's the safest free way to check for a virus? Can
you name a trial period product that I can successfully erase afterwards
without internal nags forever?