In fact, my wife's machine--an HP Pavilion--came preloaded with Windows 98, and was reasonably stable in that configuration. I upgraded it to Windows 98SE, and again, it seemed to work o.k. that way.
But when I installed a new sound card in the machine, it just would NOT recognize the card, and I couldn't find the drivers it needed. That's when I upgraded to Me just couple of months ago. Oh, the sound card worked all right, but soon after installing, we started experiencing regular system hangs. I tried tweaking and adjusting, but could never figure it out.
It got so bad that when Windows XP was imminent, I decided to go ahead and upgrade to the Home Edition. Now, it doesn't hang--but we're back to the sound card not working! AARGH!
As far as Tombraider III, that's a pretty old version of the game isn't it? Was it made for Windows 95? That may be part of the problem.