free upgrades ???

Here is something to ponder and if you have heard of this please let me know so I don't go crazy (or crazier).

I was once told that installing IE 5.0 or greater on a Win 95 box forced IE 5.0 to upgrade your kernal to 98.  It kept all of the looks of 95 but ran more like 98.  Something to do with IE 5 or greater had to do a lot of changes to run in a Windows OS. Any one ever here of this.

Now point two which made me remember.  At work I have a laptop with Win 98 SE.  While installing Office XP it forced many changes to my OS none of which I can be sure of what it's done.  Sound like another round of rumors and cocpiracy theories but I would like to know what it did.  Did I get a free install of an XP kernal on a 98 box or did I get some ME bugs with the free update?