# Mistake Edition, eh?



## SammyFox (Jul 21, 2009)

Windows ME has been running on my secondary computer for 19 days now.

I have used apps such as webshots desktop and ACDSee fotocanvas.

I also copied the entire archive of dilbert comic strips that exists to this date.

I played many games, both windows and dos games.










The number of times Windows ME crashed: 0
The number of times I had blue screen of death "warnings": 0
The number of times the computer rebooted for no reason and without warning: 0
The number of times windows didn't turn the computer off after shutting down: 0.



And you guys call it the "mistake edition"? that shit runs even better than windows 98 D:


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## Aurali (Jul 21, 2009)

Everyone has different experiences with different software, this one actually liked vista (is on 7 now). However ME is the home version of 2000, so.. *shrugs*


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## SammyFox (Jul 21, 2009)

Eli said:


> Everyone has different experiences with different software, this one actually liked vista (is on 7 now). However ME is the home version of 2000, so.. *shrugs*



wrong.

Windows ME is based on win9x while Windows 2000 is based on winnt (just like windows xp)


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## Aurali (Jul 21, 2009)

*Shrugs* This one swore that was the case. Probably wrong though. I apologize. Though I never had any experience with ME myself, (jumped from 98 to XP), so I really have no way to compare it ^^.


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## Runefox (Jul 21, 2009)

I hate it when people say Windows ME was Windows 2000 Home Edition; That just wasn't the case. It was Windows 98 Third Edition. Windows 2000 (and every PC version of Windows since) was based on the NT kernel, which is entirely 32-bit/64-bit, without anything underneath to cause problems like Win9x, which ran on top of MS-DOS in hybrid 16/32-bit mode. It was, to oversimplify, basically a program running in DOS.

It _did_ bring a lot of new things to the table, including System Restore (which ironically enough restores viruses, too, but eventually grew into the System Restore we have now), enhanced device support, interface tweaks (it was the first version of Windows to support 256-colour system tray icons), and a further focus on multimedia with WMP 6.4 out of the gate, which was the lightest, least annoying version. It also had a better networking stack, and System File Protection, which... Well, it didn't really help much.

Windows ME was notorious for being unstable because at the time, Windows 9x, an extremely insecure OS, had been around for about five years and was incredibly long in the tooth. The entire platform was swiss cheese as far as viruses and malware go - Of course, not any more. It also inherited the hybrid 16/32-bit DOS-based environment from its predecessors, which in itself isn't entirely stable. Add that to the fact that memory leaks are incredibly common with higher amounts of memory, and it's pretty clear why Win9x died off.

That said, like Win95 and Win98/SE, it actually really did perform pretty well if you took care of it.


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## ArielMT (Jul 21, 2009)

Keep using it.  All on its own, it'll start on its way to miserable after a month or two.

And are you comparing it to 98 Gold or 98SE?  Also, for good measure, is this 98 system equally pristine?


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## SammyFox (Jul 21, 2009)

ArielMT said:


> Keep using it.  All on its own, it'll start on its way to miserable after a month or two.
> 
> And are you comparing it to 98 Gold or 98SE?  Also, for good measure, is this 98 system equally pristine?



98SE.

also what do you mean by "pristine"?

by the way, I had ME before. never had any problems either.


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## ArielMT (Jul 21, 2009)

SammyFox said:


> also what do you mean by "pristine"?



Freshly installed and as up-to-date on patches as the other system.


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## Runefox (Jul 21, 2009)

I found most of the problems that my mother had with her ME-based computer was that she wouldn't stop using iMesh, or as I liked to call it at the time, "Hard Drive Hand Grenade". Flush with viruses and spyware, it was pretty much the software equivalent of such a thing. Took hours to clean and pick up the pieces, another hour to tell her to use something sensible (Kazaa Lite was the "safe choice" then), and another five minutes for her to uninstall K-Lite and grab iMesh again.

Gah, terrible memories.


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## AshleyAshes (Jul 21, 2009)

Windows ME's history is rather exagerated.  It was really little more than 98SE with more patches.  However I wouldn't use Windows 9X anything, even for an old computer.  I'd still say go with XP cause it works.  Ya know, handy things like native wireless support.  I'm not saying ME wouldn't work but just using XP would make life easier on the networking and connectivity front.  General hardware support.  As ME is floating ontop of DOS you can only use FAT32 as your best file system.  FAT32 can't address files in excess of 4GB even.  ...Or was that 2GB?


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## Aurali (Jul 21, 2009)

FAT32 is 4 gig yes.


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## Runefox (Jul 21, 2009)

Yeah, FAT32 has a 4GB maximum filesize, though the maximum partition size is theoretically 2TB, so you're still good there.

If it was Windows 98/SE, you could boot off a small FAT32 partition and set up an NTFS partition for data with one of the available DOS NTFS drivers, but Windows ME doesn't run the Autoexec.bat/Config.sys, or at least, not in the same way. I'm not sure if there's a driver available for _Windows_ - There's a couple available for EXT2/3.

It's... Been too long since I've seriously used Win9x.


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## Gnome (Jul 21, 2009)

old computer + ME = bad

your computer + ME = IDK


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## Runefox (Jul 21, 2009)

Gnome said:


> old computer + ME = [/b]decent[/b]
> 
> *modern* computer + ME = *meltdown*


Fixed that for you.  Modern hardware does _not_ like Win9x, particularly anything with greater than 128MB of RAM (hi, memory leaks!), not to mention lack of drivers.


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## ArielMT (Jul 21, 2009)

There's at least two ext2 drivers for Windows, and there is (or was) an NTFS driver for FreeDOS.  Someone's probably made an NTFS driver for Windows NinetySomething.


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## SammyFox (Jul 21, 2009)

Runefox said:


> Yeah, FAT32 has a 4GB maximum filesize, though the maximum partition size is theoretically 2TB, so you're still good there.
> 
> If it was Windows 98/SE, you could boot off a small FAT32 partition and set up an NTFS partition for data with one of the available DOS NTFS drivers, but Windows ME doesn't run the Autoexec.bat/Config.sys, or at least, not in the same way. I'm not sure if there's a driver available for _Windows_ - There's a couple available for EXT2/3.
> 
> ...


Actually it can, but it was rigged so it wouldn't.

there's a patch around that allows the user to boot into pure dos mode in windows me, which loads autoexec.bat and config.sys


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## SammyFox (Jul 21, 2009)

Runefox said:


> Fixed that for you.  Modern hardware does _not_ like Win9x, particularly anything with greater than 128MB of RAM (hi, memory leaks!), not to mention lack of drivers.



I don't know about windows 95, but windows 98 can handle up to 512mb of ram. anything higher than that causes it to fuck up big time.

but there's an unofficial service pack that fixes that and lets the user use as much memory as they want.


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## hitokage (Jul 22, 2009)

Microsoft's road map around the time of Windows 98 had the 9x line and NT line merging together for Windows 2000 (probably the reason for it's name), but it was later changed. This is also why ME was what it was - they decided to make a bridge version until what would become XP was released. It got rid of more of the DOS underpinnings, and included (if I remember correctly) a new driver model (although the old 9x drivers were supported).


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## Runefox (Jul 22, 2009)

SammyFox said:


> I don't know about windows 95, but windows 98 can handle up to 512mb of ram. anything higher than that causes it to fuck up big time.
> 
> but there's an unofficial service pack that fixes that and lets the user use as much memory as they want.



Well, yeah, but the memory leaks are atrocious at 128MB and beyond, enough so that you'll end up with heavy memory usage and paging after a bout half to a full day of uptime. I should know, I ran a P4 1.5 with 256MB of RAM on Windows 98SE, and the thing ground to a near halt after about that long.


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## ToeClaws (Jul 22, 2009)

I wouldn't advise using ANY version of an obsolete Windows.  They're punched full of enough security holes as it is even when they're supported, but after they fall off the bandwagon, they're just dangerous to run (at least, on a Network; as a stand-alone wouldn't hurt).

ME was a strange version.  They had pretty much perfected the 9x type Windows as much as such a horrid piece of coding could be with 98 Second Edition, but what they wanted to do was trying introducing the more modernized look of 2000 with some of the up-and-coming features of XP (such as System Restore).  The problem was simple - they were trying to do fancy things with a very basic OS.  The DOS-based Windows were just not very good at doing more than one major thing at a time, and ME tried too do too many things in the background.  If you disabled ALL of the extra stuff they added (which they made exceedingly hard to do), it actually ran very fast and as stable as a DOS-based OS could.  In the end though, it was still no where near as good as 2000.


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## Shino (Jul 22, 2009)

I've still got my "can't kill it" inspirion 2500 kicking around somewhere (disasembled but functioning) and it still runs Me.

I look at Me and Vista in the same light: for the most part, good operating systems that got _really_ bad publicity (for different reasons, though.)

Me was basically Microsoft wanting to put out a sucessor to Windows '98SE (which still used the then-antiquated DOS core) for home users, but wanted to give it some of the fancy features of the new Windows 2000, which was based on the NT core and still too resource hungry and too incompatible with 9x-based software to be a viable option for home users.

Unfortunately, some of those new shiny features caused compatibility errors in both applications and hardware (or more to the point: drivers) built for the 9x OS series. They also tried to improve the networking abilities to make it more user-friendly but that ended up backfiring on them.

Shortly after, XP was introduced and Microsoft made a strong push to get every PC out there running this new NT-based operating system that was designed equally for home and business users, tossing their current OS offerings to the side for this unified solotion.

To this day, I still like and occasionally use Me, but a combination of factors prevented it from ever becoming a sucessful OS in the Microsoft line.

RIP Me. We'll I'll miss you.


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## ToeClaws (Jul 22, 2009)

Agreed Shino - if ME was stripped of all the added fluff, it was faster and more stable than 98 SE.  The problem was to get it to that state you had to be pretty tech-savvy, plus it meant not using all the features that MS was trying to push as a perk of having ME.  

By that point, I had switched to Windows 2000 anyway, which was infinitely better (and perhaps still the best OS Microsoft ever made).  The only drawback to 2000 was that it did require a bit more hardware specs than ME, but not much more.

For any of you that have old systems that really can only run stuff like ME, or 98, you might want to look into converting them to Puppy Linux.  Puppy is fast, easy on resources, and most importantly, safe to use on the Net.  In fact, it's more secure than any current Windows OS.


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## WarMocK (Jul 22, 2009)

Hehe, I still got an old thinkpad with ME installed on it, and it still works perfectly despite it's age of about 9 years now (except that the bios battery is slowly dying right now, but that's not Win ME's fault).



ToeClaws said:


> For any of you that have old systems that really can only run stuff like ME, or 98, you might want to look into converting them to Puppy Linux. Puppy is fast, easy on resources, and most importantly, safe to use on the Net. In fact, it's more secure than any current Windows OS.


*Nods*
Oh, btw ToeClaws: I'll be updating my ISO today, adding the newest acpitools and probably a few new tcl/tk progs that I wrote. I'll PM you when K-9 is ready. ;-)


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## ToeClaws (Jul 22, 2009)

WarMocK said:


> Hehe, I still got an old thinkpad with ME installed on it, and it still works perfectly despite it's age of about 9 years now (except that the bios battery is slowly dying right now, but that's not Win ME's fault).



Yeah - my ex had an old laptop with Me on it - so riddled with viruses that when the previous owner put it on the network, the ISP blocked them.  It's an 11 year old Armada M7400, PII 333 that had 64M of RAM.  I updated it to 256 (as much as it would take) and put Puppy on it - worked beautifully ever since.



WarMocK said:


> *Nods*
> Oh, btw ToeClaws: I'll be updating my ISO today, adding the newest acpitools and probably a few new tcl/tk progs that I wrote. I'll PM you when K-9 is ready. ;-)



Sweet!  I look forward to it man.   For the rest of ya, WarMock's working on his own tweak of Puppy called K-9, and from the Alpha's I've been able to test, it's not only very streamlined and functional, but one of the slickest looking too.


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## CAThulu (Jul 22, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> Sweet!  I look forward to it man.   For the rest of ya, WarMock's working on his own tweak of Puppy called K-9, and from the Alpha's I've been able to test, it's not only very streamlined and functional, but one of the slickest looking too.



I've seen it (thanks ToeClaws!) and it's really shiny.  I love the look of it, and the set up.  I can't wait to see the finished result!


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## Ceuper (Jul 22, 2009)

My first PC had ME on it for years. It didn't really crash or anything, it just fucking sucked. It's hard to explain why.


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