Recently I purchased and downloaded Bejewelled 2 Deluxe from MSN games. My computer will not run the game properly unless all other applications have been closed. Moreover, when the game is played for more than half an hour (sometimes up to an hour) the computer freezes, and not even CTRL-ALT-DEL works. To restart the computer it must be switched-off at the power point. Is turning off the computer at the power point harming the computer and/or OS? Also, is there anything we can do about the freezing of the game? The computer is running Windows 98.

Having to shutdown your computer using the power point is certainly not a good thing, and should be avoided unless necessary (such as in your situation). When shutting down Windows properly using the ‘Shutdown’ function, any loaded device drivers are unloaded and other information in memory is written back to the hard drive before powering-down. When you ‘pull the plug’ on a system, you risk significant loss of data. While the effects are likely to be quite small on your computer, since all background programs have already been shutdown, if you try this stunt on a server or another critical system, then you are likely to have serious problems!

Since you close down all background applications before starting Bejewelled we can assume there is no conflict with another program running in the background. So, the first procedure to try is a repair installation of Bejewelled. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Control Panel’ and open the ‘Add/Remove Programs’ control panel. Select ‘Bejewelled 2 Deluxe’ from the list of programs and click the ‘Add/Remove’ button. In the setup window that appears, select ‘Repair Bejewelled 2 Deluxe’ then click ‘Next’. Follow the wizard to repair the program. If the repair installation does not fix the problem, try completely uninstalling and then reinstalling the game. If this does not work, there is little else I can suggest to fix this problem. If any other readers have suggestions, I would welcome your feedback.