I've been building/fixing/tweaking computers since 1992 and just last weekend was the weirdest issue I've encountered. Last week I built a new box for myself (EPoX 4SDA+, P4-1.6A, 512MB DDR, Leaktek GF3 Ti200 128MB DDR, Seagate Barracuda4 40BG, LiteOn DVD, Yamaha CD-RW, Enlight 7237 w/ Enermax 430w FMA p.s.). The build went well, and I loaded Win98SE on it, and all seemed OK.
The only game I spend any time w/ these days is Links2001, golf game. I loaded Links2001 and when I got into the graphics setting mode it told me my vid card did not meet the minimums for the game. Really? Got on the phone w/ Microsoft, who btw were great. We tried a lot of things (different DirectX, different vid drivers, 256MB RAM, among others), and nothing helped. In fact the system got to the point it wouldn't even boot into Windows. A small reddish box would appear in the upper left hand corner. In that box was a small green dash, which I've seen from Leadtek video cards before.
The MS wouldn't flat out recommend WinXP, but pretty much suggested I go there. He said they've received reports of Athlon XP's in higher clocks giving Win98 fits, as well as P4's. So, I blew the drive, installed XP Pro, and off we went to the races <g>. IMO MS is missing a market niche, as XP is simply too much OS for the majority of people (please, no flame wars here <g>). I was very dissapointed w/ the visual quality of the game in XP, as well as the complexity of the OS.
Tuesday morning I got mad and decided to give 98 one more chance. This time I did the updates from the MS Updates site, instead of the cummulative updates (I've saved for a while now) from my CD. I'm typing this on said machine, running Win98SE and it flys. And, visually it blows XP out of the water, re games. I didn't realize how easy and simple 98 was until I spent a couple days w/ XP.