Office 2002, especially Access

Situation: company computer with Windows 98SE (I asked for an upgrade several months ago) and Office 2002. Problems: (1) in Access, it regularly crashes, particularly when opening up certain kinds of queries-I end up having over a dozen copies of the database, as it sends an error report to Microsoft (I’ve had it send dozens), restarts, and most of the time asks for a new name-this not only is time-consuming, but confusing as to which one is the current one; (2) in Excel and Word, crashes are more occasional, and I end up getting additional versions of my file, e.g. filename (Version 1), and I typically get asked whether to resave the file after my PC reboots.
Any ideas other than getting all of the software updates installed (I have to be creative in this endeavor, too).