What was your biggest problem with Windows ME?

[Richardarkless]

Blue screen of death then wouldn't boot up and lost my hard drive data at the same time

[MrKuro]

my biggest problem with win me is simply that it is very out of date for today's hardware .. why would anyone what to run such an ancient OS now? (and why are we still discussing it?)

:p

realistically .. back in the old days I went from 98se to 2000 to xp .. basically i skipped ME as I had no need for the "upgrade" at the time.

[Quillz]

Windows ME was probably the worst version of Windows next to Vista. I would like to know, what was your biggest problem with it?

I personally was okay with Windows ME, the only kind of machines that would accept it were those weird machines. I still preferred 2000. Windows ME had one serious bug in Internet Explorer where it would ask you if you wanted to debug on every other website.

Vista is the best version of Windows and 1.0 is the worst version. I never used ME, I went directly from 98 to XP, but from all that I hear, most of ME's compatibility issues (which I think are grossly exaggerated) came from the fact it dropped real-mode DOS, which was present in the older 95 and 98 releases.

And note the reason I never had ME wasn't because of the "bad" things I heard about it, it's simple that I picked up 98 later, probably early 2000 or so, before ME was released, and by the time I needed a new computer, XP had already been out for a year or so.

[togerland]

I remember explorer always crashing on it

[Boktai1000]

On my friends computer I uninstalled a program he didnt use and the dial-up modem just stopped working... the only fix was a reformat. Just these weird problems, but I never had it on my pc.

[ring0]

my experience with ME consisted of:

go to store, come home with at-the-time brand new 1GHz machine for my brother.

connect cables, boot up for the first time.

see winME screen.

see winME crash.

RAGE.

wipe disk in fury and install win2k.

it made a poor impression, quickly.

[togerland]

I remember my neighbors new dell windows ME computer would keep booting in safemode for some reason and had to reinstall to fix it

[Raa]

It was released? :p :p

No really, it was a pain, locked up on hardware detection frequently, bsods, creative drivers HATED WinME, and just general random problems that couldn't be explained.

No issues with 98SE!

[Rudy]

my biggest problem was that I was running Win2k before I tried ME (you can't go from 2k to ME.....that's just crazy lol)

[QuarterSwede]

... most of ME's compatibility issues (which I think are grossly exaggerated) came from the fact it dropped real-mode DOS, which was present in the older 95 and 98 releases.

No, it really was terrible. I had a machine that was "made for" Windows ME and it had full system crashes, quite literally, twice a day on average from the get go. That OS was pure garbage if you ask me.

[togerland]

My dads dell 1.4ghz celeron would freeze alot on windows ME and it was built for it.... I remember putting windows 2000 on it and never crashed again...

[.tony]

I've used Windows ME and Vista and both work fine, I don't see why people bash both OS's.

[togerland]

I think the problems were the drivers.... manufactors didnt' port the 9x drivers to ME until later..... I think I remembered windows 2000 drivers working better on windows ME then 98 drivers

[39 Thieves]

Rarely used it. Went from NT 4.0 -> Win2k Pro, infrequently dabbling with the consumer releases of Windows for anything other than gaming. In that regard, ME was essentially on par with the experiences I had with 9x. And Vista is the best OS Microsoft has released to date. Most problems I read about could be likely chalked up to PEBKAC or a general overestimation of the persons level of competence.

[Kralik]

Vista has been the best but whatever... I don't want to start another flamewar with all the vista haters.

A friend had it on his PC and it was really annoying because it crashed for no apparent reason all of the time.

I agree abt Vista.. I have Ultimate 64 bit and the last time I was this happy with Windows it was when I had Windows 2000.. there was just that "Vista keeps forgetting folder settings thing" but I fixed that and now it runs smoooooth.. anyway.. thread is abt ME so...

What I hate most is that it was C * * P!!

it ran surprisingly well on my system for a month or so.. no crashes at all and then it started to show why ppl hate it.. it crashed even when i maximised a window.. :| started getting on my nerves.. :angry:

[ViperAFK]

Comparing vista to me = immediate fail. Vista is fine, Me was awful this thread is pure flamebait.

[haefft]

My first computer was a ME machine, sadly my first virus I got was on a ME machine. Lesson learned.

[9]

Vista has a future because MS is going that direction and because they will maintain it. In contrast, WinME was near DOA (deliberately). Some features it got from 98 were improved (usb, etc), while the new features were butchered on as if ME was a test mule for XP. I think MS just didn't have enough NT programmers to dev the future XP features onto 2k, else they'd have released a 2khome instead of ME. And MS was too cheap to release an SP for SE or maybe sell a halfprice Second And A Half Edition (98s.5e? 98saahe?)

I ran ME from 2000 to 2006. In little ways, the UI was slightly better than 98se, but ME needed reinstalling about every 2+ years (Symptoms: crash frequency increased. or a rash of "VXD" BSODs at bootup, which are incurable.).

Later it seemed the patches must have been sloppy (something I'd watch for as MS lifecycles out XP).

OE6 would go bad, then IE6 would follow. Due to the "migration" to NT inside IE/OE6, there was a strange rigamarole to uninstall IE "completely" (reverts to IE5), then reinstall IE6sp1. If that didn't "take", you'd see the OE5 splash when you started OE6, but the list of dll's would be OE6's. And (some?) of the patches wouldn't show in the Help>About (I can't remember these symptoms exactly)

And stuff like Symantec AV wasn't kept compatible (It another AV piled up 4+GB of crap in the restore folders until Windows ran out of swap space. The restore points were already horked, and the solution was to deltree the crap via DOS boot floppy.)

So by 2006, likely the best way to run WinME was to install, avoid (most) patches, and use it as offline computer. This computer runs XP great on 640kB RAM, btw.

Vista... is on someone else's midrange 2007 laptop (I'm the "tech"), so I haven't worked enough with Vista yet.

IMO, the UAC popups are just a mild extra annoyance. The "copy or replace" (moving files) popup is a mess.

"And Vista is the best OS Microsoft has released to date."

WinV is not yet the best. it'll be best when all hardware is good enough to run it, and when Vista reaches middle-age. Better info will be on the net. (I avoid Vista info from 2006.)

"Most problems I read about could be likely chalked up to PEBKAC or a general overestimation of the persons level of competence."

(Tho Vista PEBKAP is PEBKAP only if the user PEBKAPed the same activity on XP, too. Else Vista is a UE regression.)

Vistas UI seems to be a regression, but that's mostly due to the icons (which seem worse on LCD displays than CRTs). XP's "candy" UI was better than WinV's "muddy" UI, tho the "classic" (9x/2k >>XP) UI is still the best. Also there's more wasted acreage in Vista's UI. Anyone know where Vista's userchrome file is? :-)

Normally, every era software runs best on same era hardware. but ... I maxed (3gb) the ram on that laptop that came w/ Vista, and it's still bizarrely sluggish at times. I haven't researched which services to kill on Vista (or laptops) and I assume some of that crap is the laptop manufacturer's crap. (I did remove mcafee, and that seemed to have been the only pre-installed 3rd party adware garbage on it.)

There was no Vista driver for the laser until months later, and then the driver file was mislabeled (and probably still is) at (Samsung's) site.

BTW Win2000...

before upgrading a 98se Celeron to XP, I tried a spare 2k "seat", but 2k kept losing all of its SP's. Within only a few months it needed frequent "repairs" & reinstalls (all SPs were via MS's SP cd), until the last - 2k was irreparable. I bought XP, cuz I was afraid eventually the hard drive would fill past 2k's "un-SP-ed" max, and the data would be gone after one of those SP reinstalls. So I don't have much impression of running 2k. Otherwise, my ME ran better than that 2k, but the WinME was on AMD. :-)

IE6/OE6 sp1 on the 98se Celeron never needed reinstall, btw. But OE wasn't used much on that one. (Also the Celeron has become sluggish, i think due to accumulated ware and drivers install, remove, etc over almost 4 years. Needs a complete reinstall ... xp sp3 is timely.)

98se was good for days (or longer) without shutdown. ME "needed" shutdown every night. XP is good for months. Vista is good for weeks, but longer I don't know, because more patches seem to require restarts on WinV than on XP.

that was long... :-) {inhale ...}

[sanctified Veteran]

VxD's

[leesmithg]

I did have ME, I built a PC from spares for my fiance's class and not once did it crash.

I suppose using the correct drivers and software only written for ME worked.

XP was great, Vista is better.

[Srsly]

Vista is decent. I prefer XP, but Vista is no where as bad as ME.

It crashed on me too, got the BSOD too often. Dont care if it were the drivers or the OS, it crashed too much so i went straight back to 98 SE (which is still the second best Windows OS imo), and stayed with it until 2003, when i finally upgraded to XP.

[.tony]

I did have ME, I built a PC from spares for my fiance's class and not once did it crash.

I suppose using the correct drivers and software only written for ME worked.

XP was great, Vista is better.

+1

Sums me up in a nutshell too.

[DDStriker]

I did have ME, I built a PC from spares for my fiance's class and not once did it crash.

+1

i used ME for a long time even when xp started becomming the standard and i was enjoying my virus free environment whilst xp was being targetted by that issue/virus that kept rebooting the pc :p

never knew people had issues with ME till 2006~ :D

[backdrifter]

You know I was getting app. 2 or 3 crashes everyday with ME, but my 9x system weren't any better so I always thought using a computer was just like that in those days. After XP I can't really believe how I put up with that crap for all those years.

[MidnightDevil]

The constant annoying sudden crashes and blue screens out of the nothing! That was my biggest problem! lol