You can likely increase your Hard Drive or CD ROM performance by:

Opening up the Device Manager Double click on the CD or Hard Drive. Click on the Settings tab

If you have a DMA box that is not grayed out, check that box Reboot when prompted

When Win98 starts again, see if that box is still checked.

This is especially beneficial with the newer UDMA drives which are supported by Win98 This will also greatly reduce CPU utilization during hard drive activity.