Looks like the win98 crash will not be fixed. I even submitted a bug to Gnome but it got no response so far:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=316878
Since no one agreed to roll back windows libs to the previous working version, we have to officially drop support for this platform.
This saddens me immensely, it's a defeat which will likely affect my feelings towards the project. I have win98 on an older box that my wife and kids use, and now suddenly it has no latest Inkscape anymore. (Not that it worked there perfectly before, but at least it worked and was used quite often.)
Here's my proposed addition to the Known Issues in the release notes - Peter and/or Jon, please review and commit (unless you have any other ideas, of course):
Due to a bug in GTK 2.8, this version of Inkscape will not work on Windows 95/98/ME. Please don't send us crash reports from those platforms. We hope to be able to resume support for these platforms in the future, but no specific committments can be made at this point.
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org