WinME, finally a good 9x OS, or the most pathetic peice of crap Microsoft has shoved at us so far?

reitz

Elite Member
Oct 11, 1999
3,878
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My vote most definitely is for the latter. My computer's been running well lately, so I figured I might as well abuse it by installing this POS on it (truthfully, I am trying to recreate the problems our users have been experiencing, so I can test the fixes I've run across).

Good God, what was Micro$oft thinking? Stable? Not a chance. I had 3 BSOD's and 4 hard reboots during installation alone. On the first full boot, I got another 2 BSOD's and had to hard reboot again. It finally booted into Winblows, and BSOD'ed as soon as I tried to check out the display properties. I reset the computer once again, and the same thing happened. FYI, this is the retail upgrade for Win98. I had a clean install of Win98 SE (only programs that were installed were installed with 98).

WTF?!? I've been dealing with some fscked up problems caused by this OS lately (routing issues; I work tech support for an ISP), but I never expected it to be this pathetic. Has anyone actually had it work for them without causing any major problems?

The one good thing I can say is that finally M$ produced an OS that won't write to the MBR and cause headaches with my Win2k installation.
 

Rand

Lifer
Oct 11, 1999
11,071
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I don't find it any more unstable than their previous OS's but I see absolutely nothing to recommend it.
 

alocurto

Platinum Member
Nov 4, 1999
2,174
0
76
I skipped that for 2000 pro. Why bother w/ ME. I think Microsoft only made it so people could afford it. The 2000s are a bit pricy if I recall. I am all about 2000 now a days, I think 2000 kicks a$$, as far as ME goes......f it.
 

Sunner

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
11,641
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Latter.
Its such a #¤¤&/&/%¤ piece of ¤%%&&%%&¤!!!! :|:|:|
 

woodie1

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2000
5,947
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reitz-

I have to agree with you. I've tried to install it every way I could and none of them were stable. After about 15 attempts I have returned to my stable 98SE.

I think M$ has put one over on us again.
 

bluezebra1098

Senior member
May 8, 2000
449
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In contrast I tried to do an overlay over Win 98Se but it would not allow it giving me a explorer.exe error. I formatted and haven't seen a lockup or BSOD yet. IE 5.5 on ME seems to be faster than the one I had downloaded from the microsoft site before it's release.
WIN 2K...been there...done that...got tired of crappy drivers that everyone seemed to scramble to get out because win2k came out too fast for them.
I like ME..it'll do until Whistler.
 

Raincity

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2000
4,477
12
81
MY winme disc sits in a drawer unused with a bunch of other useless stuff. Why bother installing Winme just to hack up the registry and remove the media player to make winme usable. Forget it, dual booting Win2k and Win98se is good enough for me.

Rain
 

Shadow07

Golden Member
Oct 3, 2000
1,200
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I will never recommend WinME. When I got Windows 2000 Pro and installed it, I gave my 3 Windows 98 CD's to my friends. I truley must say that Windows ME is a bad patch to Windows 98SE. Windows ME is not a good OS, nor should anyone use it. Go with Windows 2000. I have never had any problems with Windows 2000.
 

they call mr big

Senior member
Oct 25, 1999
417
0
0
crap! used it about three days already and it's crashed and used up all my memory (128meg)windows is slower to load but doesn't suck up all my memory and no real crashes, only from me overclocking too far!
 

SLEEPER5555

Golden Member
Aug 16, 2000
1,597
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It has been alot better to me than 98 was! I could not even go an hour or two in 98 without having some type of problem, I did a clean install with ME and it has only had an error one time in the last week and it was just IE 5.5 was not shuting down coorectly (i had this prob in 98 almost every time i closed a IE5.5 window) Also my boot time with 98 was 2 min and 30 sec. This has now been cut in half with all the same stuff installed on my system! So I am very happy with ME until Win 2002 (the consumer version of NT/2K)
 

abracadabra1

Diamond Member
Nov 18, 1999
3,879
1
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winme is better than the other 9X that i've used.
a whole lot stabler than its predecessors.

but it's not a great leap for microsoft. simply a small upgrade for the end user and more money to microsoft and that's why i d/l all these upgrades off the net :)
 

JellyBaby

Diamond Member
Apr 21, 2000
9,159
1
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Win ME may have been rushed to market. Even in summer 2000 beta testers were reporting a lot of problems. And the version of IE 5.5 that shipped with ME was not the final version. And where was the release hype?! Nada to be found. M$ likely rushed it out in light of their anti-trust troubles (e.g. they may have wanted to hook as many folks on Wintel/IE as possible before the breakup). Now since the Supreme Court tossed back some M$ litigation to the appeals courts, nothing drastic will happen to M$ until 2002 at the earliest. Plenty of time to release a service pack for ME. :)
 

Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
6,126
485
126
All I have to say is that it sure as hell is not worth the money to buy it if you have Win98 SE already. The only REAL improvement that was made was some memory tweaks and the integraded backup system. But in reality, if you setup your computer correctly to begin with and you own a CD-R (or CD-WR) you most likely already own software to do backups and restores just as easily as Win ME can, and you don't have to deal with all the hassle of getting your hardware to run correctly on Win ME.

I truely believe BOTH Win ME and Win 2000 were rushed projects that needed about 1-2 more years of work before publishing. But it seems that Microsoft is starting to feal the effects of their stock plumiting over the past months due to the Monopoly lawsuit and they needed something to start bringing in more capital, thus rushed products that only implement 1/3 of the features that were origionally going to be supported (what happened to OpenGL support for Win2000? , etc.).

They then start releasing news of a new OS that will do what Win2000 was suppose to do, knowing that 80% of the people will buy either Win 2000 or Win ME just because it is their newest stuff and not have to really make a product until the next OS release.

This is why I can't wait for Linux to be supported by more game companies, cause once that happens, Microsoft will have to get their act together, cause they now would be selling their product for $200 for a new license while Linux is free and has about 10x better resource managment. Hell, did you ever try leaving your Win9x machine running for more then 3 weeks without a reboot, and use that PC to run games and do work during that time? (and I mean before going in and tweaking the system.ini, win.ini, and loading VBscripts to free up RAM that Windows is not even using but would't let you use it either).
 

Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
6,126
485
126
Golden Member? Never saw that one until now. I have really slacked off in visiting and posting here over the last 2 years *shrug*
 

reitz

Elite Member
Oct 11, 1999
3,878
2
76
To be fair, I formatted and tried a clean install, and it's worked flawlessly so far. I've run into so many problems at work though with people upgrading from 98SE to ME that I couldn't possibly recommend it as an upgrade option. As a full install on a clean drive, it seems to work fairly well (though no better than 98SE for me), but I definitely think M$ should have spent a little more time on it to make the upgrade work.

It's definitely not worth the special $50 upgrade price.