First, go to System Properties (windows+pause)
Find Startup and Recovery
In there, in the system failure section, disable Automatically restart
You will now have the time to see the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death)
Check if a driver is mentionned
I'm not sure about this, but, I think that the fact DOS is 16 bits has something to do with it.
I remember using win3.1 over a network and getting only 15K/s with a 10mbits NIC, but when I upgraded to win95, the speed went up.