Apache/PHP/Mysql win98SE - Connection Dropping

Hi. I am using my win98 machine as a dev box for a web/php application. I am doing fairly frequent queries to the mysql instance, and every now and again the connection between php and mysql drops and I can't reinstate it without bouncing apache. Almost seems like there's a leak somewhere and all the resources are getting used up. I have checked code for mysql_result_free() and mysql_close() usage, and its all pretty clean. Symptoms of the error are that php returns mysql_ errors consistently for each call after failure. Has anyone experienced this before? If so, I'd be grateful for any workarounds. Thanks in advance... Mark Edwards.