Windows 98 SE Hangs On Restart

I had a problem restarting Windows 98 SE. It would just
hang with the hard drive still running and a message
that "Windows Is Shutting Down". Following
troubleshooting procedures found on the Microsoft Support
Website, I found that the culprit is a program named
BridgeDeCor.exe. When I disable its loading upon startup
through MSConfig, Windows restarts flawlessly. All I know
is that it is either involved in encryption or password
creation for my Linksys Powerline EtherFast 10/100
Bridge. My call to Linksys Support did not help to shed
any light on the problem.

The program is loaded from the registry upon startup. How
critical is it to the operation of the bridge?
Should it always be loaded upon startup and if so how can
I get around this problem? Any help would be deeply
appreciated.