OK, first,
As Fatboy said, XP is fully compatible with 98, I have had a 98 system and an XP system running side by side on my network for over a year... flawless communication... I would suspect that either one or the other of your machines has corrupted files pertaining to network sharing... you might want to try re-installing both of the... heck.. bite the bullet and upgrade the other, I assure you, XP is pretty much the bomb in OS's right now. (I know, it doesn't compare to linux.. hush you junkies.)
As for Macromedia vs Frontpage... and frontpage sucking...
I am a macromedia nut, I have flash 5 and the rest of the macromedia suite for that generation... and photoshop, so I am no light weight in this arena, for what I need, Dreamweaver is best... but you miss the point if you try to compare dreamweaver and frontpage... frontpage is for those that are not so savvy, it was origionally designed for ma and pa kettle to put their family photos on the web, or to throw up their small business... not to make huge corporate quality sites. For what Frontpage tries to accomplish, it is a great tool. For more complex stuff, dreamweaver kills the competition... heck, in ease of inserting flash, nothing comes close... but for all I love it, Dreamweaver has it's flaws as well... as I said earlier... sometimes working with tables in dreamweaver is enough to drive one insane... most of the time not... but when it does get finicky, I fire up frontpage, and easily work through it... sometimes simpler, is better.
(Thanks by the way... I try to be fun with my running commentary).