All the things you mentioned above can easily be fixed by tweaking the registry a little. I don't know how to do it myself, I've had it done by my dad (he finished like 20 computer-oriented universities).
And here you're talking about Win98. That's... hmm... that's kind of like comparing cavemen's axes and nukes. I mean, of course they made worse things in the past. Get XP - mine has crashed on me, oh, let's see - three times. In five years of usage. One was because of a power shortout, second was because of me overloading the computer with like 300 processes while running a game (yes, I know, I was young and foolish back then...), and third was after playing a game with a scratched disk (my compy froze).
I'd believe you if I had seen my own comp crash like... 7 times.
"It's a coincidence..." I'd say. But 3? No. No no no no no no...NO!