I have a compaq lap top, whith win.98 on it. recently when i switch it on, it has a very small screen area.
can anyone please help.

Do you mean that the display only fills a small part of the screen and it has a thick black border around the sides?

Try right-clicking on a blank space and going to Properties on the menu. Select the Settings tab of the Display Properties screen that opens up. There's a slider bar in the bottom right corner for the screen resolution. It might be that your resolution has been decreased from 1024x768 for example down to a small resolution such as 640x480. If that's the case, move the slider bar to the right to increase the resolution to a more appropriate setting.

Hope that helps - let us know how you get on