Okay you all win.. two replies and neither even began to address the question of the thread.. you can tell me all how great you think of each other until you are blue in the face.. the reality is that the questioning of whether I am sure what operating system I use was insulting, and he offered *nothing* afterwards about what the problem might be.. you people can cling together in a tight little clique and hug and kiss eachother as you see fit.. I am going to leave this game on the "do not bother" rack and drop out of this circus.. don't bother replying to me either (although I am sure the person who started this thread would love some help still) as I will not be returning to see what u might post in *your* defensive response either.. enjoy your game for all that can get it to run.. I can't, and obviously not many on this earth can tell me why this is.. good luck to you all ironing out the bugs and stuff.. I can find other games to play where I won't be putting up with self important herds of self congratulating non answering insulting question asking nobodies ~Cheers.. you lost someone that could have been passionate and helpful with your fledgling game. 
You apparently haven't done any forum support ever, and if so, not for long...
While this might have been insulting to you, there's a lo-ot of people who give incomplete or just plain wrong information. So after hunting bogus-problems or rediscovering a known bug for the 100th time, you eventually make it a habit to make sure that you have all the information you need, and that it is correct. Either you do that, or you will stop taking pleasure in helping people - or you kill yourself

.
With Win98, SE or not, you're riding a dead horse. Since your computer freezes, I'd assume it's some low level device driver, usually the one for the graphics card. Now ATI has always been the master of crappy drivers, whether it's for linux or windows, and I had the same problem with a 9600 Radeon - random freezes, while the sound device also went 'woohoo'. I fixed it by throwing out that stupid card - after I changed everything else on my computer except the casing. I did use 2000 at the time though, not 98.