Downgrading for better performance?

Win98SE, 64Mb RAM, Celeron 700MHz, approx. 3 Yr. old PC.
My question has to do with IE6, Windows Media Player 9 and DirectX 9beta. To my understanding, with my current Hardware haveing the latest versions of these Programs is affecting my PC’s performance. Is it possible to go back to using previous versions? i.e. IE5.5, DX 8, WMP 8? I occasionally have problems with WMP 9 and IE6. I have been told that the latest versions tend to gobble up a lot of memory and that I should regress to the previous versions. Any advice, comments and/or steps to accomplish this?!?!