You may know ‘Active Desktop’ as the lousy feature in WindowsXP, and the even worse one in ‘Windows 98.’ It’s a huge memory hog, and it posses many instability problems; Active Desktop is definitely a bad idea to use with Win98. To disable this feature for good, first load up your registry editor (Start -> Run then type Regedit and hit the OK button) and follow this path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> Software -> Microsoft -> CurrentVersion -> Policies -> Explorer. In the right hand window create a new “Binary Value” with the name “NoActiveDesktop”. After it has been created, double click on it and give it a value of “01 00 00 00″. Save, reboot, and you’re all set.

From now on, Active Desktop will remained disabled even if you try to enable it. This change should speed things up considerably, and probably improve stability of the operating system too.