Hey Fur,
I want you to know that anyone with any sense of respect for the ecology is still using Windows 98. It works fine and it works on old machines that won't support anything later.
I'm an IT contractor and only yesterday did I finally decide to update the laptop that I use at work and that was only "greed". The old one still works perfectly adequately using Win98.
I almost regret not being able to still say "I'm still using Win98".
Enjoy it while you can.
Also, thanks to your post, I have just resolved (for the time being) exactly the same problem on my daughter's ThinkPad 390E running Win98.
Cheers,
Keith R