I'll take a crack at some of this.

I just tried outlook express and Windows 98se. When I resized the address book, long and slightly wider, and closed the program and reopened it, it maintained the size. ME should be the same. If not, I'd say try to repair it:

OE is a component of IE, and to repair Internet Explorer: Go to Start - Settings
- Control Panel - choose Add-Remove Programs. Click to highlight Internet Explorer
then click the Change-Remove tab - choose Repair I.E. OK - Yes. If you get a message
saying it can't be repaired, you'll need to reinstall it.

that may fix some of the problems you are having.

If not post back and let us know.