Last week, July 20 or 21,  when the temperature in Baltimore reached
99 my computer started acting erratically. Checking the CPU
temperature using the "hardware monitor" of setup, showed 46centigrade,
114 farnheid. The malfunctioning was mainly in the keyboard which
sometimes did, but most of the time did not enter the caracter I
pressed and sometimes entered the wrong character. But the keyboard
was not the only trouble. Inability to enter  the writing pad, lack of
response from the printer, and failure to load the cd-rom sometimes
occured, but most of the time did not, and as time passes the coputer
seems to improve.
Does anybody know what caused the trouble? Is the computer repairing
itself and if so how? Is there anything I can do to accelerate the
improvement and if so how? Would reloading windows 98 help or cause
more problems?

114F is fine for CPU temp. Computers don't heal themselves.
If you're still using Windows 98, my bet is that your PC
is fairly old, and the power supply may be failing. Have
a tech take a look inside and see how much dust has come
to accumulate over the years. Cleaning it out (including
the inside of the power supply), and reseating all the
connections may improve things considerably. Reinstalling
windows won't help if there are such hardware issues.