WinXP had more, especially after installing or updating drivers or system patches.
Win98SE was a whole 'nother story, as you say. Amazing what we put up with.
driver issues in 98 was the worst- always dreaded having to update drivers, or add new hardware- I always knew there was going to be some issue- AND I only had dial-up at the time so it would take forever just to try to research what the problem might be lol- Seemed like i was always hunting down some .dll file to get something working right- I hated going through the ‘wizard’ to like install a new piece of hardware- you’d get to the ‘have disk’ part- but it could never find the right fail o the disk lol- had to hunt it down manually o nthe disk- Never seemed to work right-
Windows 7 was a real treat- everything was pretty much automatic- and just seemed to work right- I really enjoyed windows 7-
I’d add a new piece of hardware- and it would automatically find everything it needed, or go online and find it- easy peasy-