I run Win2K also, and I've learned the hard way that scandisks and defrags can be tricky. I've nuked my computer a couple of times trying to run third-party scanners/defraggers, and now I only allow The True Microsoft™ Utilities to work on my system drive. They seem to know the ins-and-outs of working on a disk which has lots of operating system files open and in use. That, by the way, is why they generally exit and do their thing before Windows boots. So, first piece of advice is, don't use Norton's disk checker on your system drive.

My second piece of advice is don't use Norton Utilities. I love their anti-virus software, and other utilities like Ghost which have saved my ass, but I've had nothing but problems with the Utilities suite. It hosed my computers but good several times before I wised up. I think it's just too damned aggressive, and pokes its tendrils way too deep inside Windows, resulting in an unstable operating system. (Or, to be fair, an operating system even more unstable than when it's working well.)

Your interpretation of the frozen screen seems about right. Microsoft's utilities display text messages while they work, but I don't know what to expect from Norton.

Gotta run, your next post gave me an idea...