A few things may help you.

To get into safe mode press F8 during the boot cycle. It works on ALL computers that boot to Windows. This is a Windows Function not the Laptop. When you see F2 or F10 on start-up, these are coming from the COMPUTER BIOS. The BIOS then hands off control to the Operating SYSTEM (in this case windows). One of the first things Windows does while booting is check to see if F8 was pressed. So just start pressing when you see the First splash screen.

Second your computer is most likely running slow do to Spyware or Male-ware. I say this because you mention Bearshare. Bearshare is a “FREE” peer to peer files sharing program. The program is used to share (pirate) music and movies. Music being the most common. Notice I said it was “FREE”. Nothing is FREE. Everything has its price. When Bearshare installed it AUTOMATICALLY installs other 3rd party software without your permission or knowledge. These 3rd party programs are the Spyware and Male-ware programs. The writers of these programs pay Bearshare money to be installed when the Bearshare program installs. These programs are now running on your machine and Bearshare got paid for it so now Bearshare wasn’t FREE. Most of these programs collect data and send it back to there servers. They start when you computer starts. You may notice the computer and net access being really slow during the first 10 minutes or so after start up. This is because all of those Spyware programs are starting and trying to CHECK IN over the net at the same time. Then your computer becomes a little better as they all settle down in to a normal routine. You would think you could just uninstall Bearshare. This would remove Bearshare from your system but NOT the 3rd party programs it installed! There will be no mention of these programs in the Add Remove section of Control Panel.
You need to run a Spyware removal program. Problem is you said it was running Windows 98. Combo Fix will not run on Win98. Nor will Win98 support AVG or Superantispyware. You need to find a older version of a Anti Spyware program to run. Or edit the registry yourself if you know how.

Hope this helps you…