Hello Adikto,
When you updated from Win98 to WinXp did you do a complete format of the hard driver and install a new set of windows or did you just update win98 to winXP?
I have never had luck with just updating, something's just never seem to act right or connect up properly.
I would suggest backing up all the files you want to save on cd or another hard drive and do a fresh clean install of windows on a blank hard drive.
Yes, I would also get the update from 7.0 to 7.6v2 also, there has been many fixes/patches since the original 7.0 release.