Win 98 was the worst. It was constantly dying the Blue Screen of Death. Later, it became so badly infected it was barely usable. I manged to download an antivirus with Spider or Web in its name. It cleaned it up.
After that Win 98 worked, but still died on a regular basis. I used the opportunity to quickly buy an XP system.
I've had this Win 7 laptop for over eight years, and it's never died on me. Never crashed.
My first computer was at work, and it was a MS-DOS 2.1 machine. We then graduated to 3.3, 4.0, 5.0 and then 6.2. Then came Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.11 for Workgroups. That's when I separated from the USAF.
I found out in the days of W98 that it had to be reprogrammed every 6 months or, as you found out, it would crash. The place I worked at graduated to Windows 2000 which worked remarkably well. That's where they were at when that job closed their doors in 2001.
I've used all the operatings up through Windows 10 throughout my IT days. Overall, Windows XP and 7 were, and are, the best operating systems Microsoft put out, chiefly because the user could control the operating system. Everything since Windows 8 on up are all about the IT world controlling the PC. That's why I hate to use anything other than Windows 7 though I do have my computers dual booted with both 7 and 10.