What was your biggest problem with Windows ME?

[thealexweb]

Windows was one of the best operating systems I've ever used, in four years of using it I NEVER had a major problem and only had one or two problems towards the end. When I upgraded to XP that's when the problems began. People always say "oh it's rubbish" well not for me I thought it was great. Also the way the buffers worked Windows Me could burn a CD slightly faster than XP good.

Windows was one of the best operating systems I've ever used, in four years of using it I NEVER had a major problem and only had one or two problems towards the end. When I upgraded to XP that's when the problems began. People always say "oh it's rubbish" well not for me I thought it was great. Also the way the buffers worked Windows Me could burn a CD slightly faster than XP could.

[gigapixels Veteran]

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

Same here. I mean, I was still learning at that point, so it could have very well been partially or completely my fault, but seeing as ME is the universal scapegoat, I'll go with that :D

[Stephen Veteran]

it existed

[thealexweb]

Well, honestly, I never had a problem with ME that I didn't have with 95/98/98SE.

The reason most people dislike it is because they went into it with expectations of it being better than 98 SE, and it wasn't really. It was pretty similar, stability wise, feature wise (System Restore was new, but eh).

See I knew I wouldn't be on my own.

[Nashy]

I had a few crashes here and there, no more than I had with 98 though. 98SE was a charm, loved it.

I couldn't connect to Battle.Net with StarCraft, that made me sad.

[Rigby]

I really didn't have any problems with it at all. It supported my hardware better than 98, no resource conflicts on a clean install. True it crashed sometimes but no more than any version of Windows 9x, they all crash like crazy. Someone mentioned VxDs, blame the hardware makers for that. WDM was introduced with Windows 98.

My biggest complaint if I had to choose one would be system restore. It obviously was not ready and acted more like an early beta version than a final. Never really got it to work right and turning it off was pointless since it just turned itself on again (and you could never get rid of that annoying _Restore folder). Media Player 7 sucked pretty majorly also. I found a program called System Restore Remover Pro which fixed both those problems though.

There were a lot of improvements over 98. Better hardware support, better network stack, MUCH faster defragmenter (though you can just copy the defrag.exe file from Me to a Windows 98 system if you wish). I think it's just one of those things everyone bashes because it was popular to do so. I'm sure a lot of the haters never even used it.

[thealexweb]

There were a lot of improvements over 98. Better hardware support, better network stack, MUCH faster defragmenter (though you can just copy the defrag.exe file from Me to a Windows 98 system if you wish). I think it's just one of those things everyone bashes because it was popular to do so. I'm sure a lot of the haters never even used it.

I didn't know about the defrag.exe trick, I might try it some time.

[linsook]

i had no big issues with it.

[Rigby]

I didn't know about the defrag.exe trick, I might try it some time.

Yeah I found out about it on some tweak site way back when. I always use it now when I install 98 on an old computer. It's a lot faster and it doesn't constantly stop and start over like the one with 98 seemed to do. :)

[EcPercy]

I think Vista is a lot better OS than Windows ME ever was. I have x64 Ultimate on two personal computers running flawlessly.

Anyway, Windows ME was a sad POS. I installed it on a computer that was running Windows 98SE just fine. Long story short, the install rebooted to complete and then it went to a BSOD and never came up. Broke the CD in half after that and went back to 98se.

Edited July 22, 2008 by EcPercy

[dmd3x]

Driver support was bad...

[Rigby]

Driver support was bad...

How? Windows 98 and Me use the same drivers. I think Me did cut out real mode support but if any manufacturers were still using such ancient drivers like that by the time Me came out that would be their fault. :)

[Budious]

I never had the opportunity to use it, I read the reviews. Went from 98 to 2000 and skipped the ME debacle. But as bad as 95/98/98se were, I can't imagine ME having any worse a reputation. NT 4.0 was perfect except for lack of DirectX support for gaming, so I was quite pleased when 2000 came along.

[slippery]

[Mike]

ME was fine for me, never crashed except one time when it was installed on a failing HDD

[dmd3x]

Windows 2000 totally pwn3d Windows Me, Windows 2000 in many ways still pwns

[afusion]

Everything caused a blue screen.

lmao so true.

even in the first 5 minutes of me booting up into millennium I got a BSOD.

btw to the OP poster; Vista is far superior to ME, you should use Vista on a current spec'd machine and then give your opinion :yes:

[Starbuck84]

One thing that bugged me to totally annoyance were the BSOD's I got randomly (all NVIDIA related btw, no flame), while 98SE was as stable as a rock. Also when I did get a BSOD in ME, the screen would go blue for a flash and then my monitor would go to standby? :o Never touched it after that and went to Windows2000, that ran fine for several years :)

[notuptome2004]

for me when i installed it i had it installed on a intel Pentium 233mhz MMX chip with 256megs of ram and while it was faster 4months to the day i installed it it started crashing and all sorts of messed up issue so i reinstalled it and it worked great for another 3 months but almost to the 4months mark again it started its crap. then in went back to windows 98se until XP came out and i upgraded . now for me Vista has never BSOD on me not at all even in the beta 2 stages so yea awsome for vista but spit canned for windows ME

[NEVER85]

Windows 2000 totally pwn3d Windows Me, Windows 2000 in many ways still pwns

Indeed. Windows 2000 was my favorite OS until Vista came along. I never was a huge fan of XP.

[StevoJD]

Indeed. Windows 2000 was my favorite OS until Vista came along. I never was a huge fan of XP.

That's a first. :p

[revvo]

Windows M.E.? hmm Let's see

I had Windows 98 SE, then M.E. was released I was like YAY a new Windows!

So I prepared everything, backup the files, create a boot disk floppy, format and install a fresh copy of Windows M.E. So I look at WIndows M.E. loading up for the very first time and I was like "z0mg new Icons!". I doubleclicked MY COMPUTER, my very first action in M.E., and the computer BSOD'ed me.

I was like "um................ ok". At other times, I would get an error where it would popup a message

"Unknown has caused an error in unknown. Unknown must shut down". LiKE WTF! I've had this in 98 too, but they were there in M.E. too

2000 and XP were godlike in comparison to those 9X pos DOS based windows.

[Andre S. Veteran]

The computer would fail to turn off. It remained jammed on an empty dos screen. Numerous unexplainable error messages. The joys of CTRL-ALT-DELETE CTRL-ALT-DELETE. When I switched to Windows XP, needless to say, I was extremely impressed with how stable it ran in comparison. Now I run Vista and it's just rock solid! Microsoft made a lot a progress since 2000.

[roadgeek9]

Indeed. Windows 2000 was my favorite OS until Vista came along. I never was a huge fan of XP.

Windows 2000 was my favorite OS until I got my new laptop in 2005 with Windows XP. I am not much of a Vista fan.

Windows M.E.? hmm Let's see

I had Windows 98 SE, then M.E. was released I was like YAY a new Windows!

So I prepared everything, backup the files, create a boot disk floppy, format and install a fresh copy of Windows M.E. So I look at WIndows M.E. loading up for the very first time and I was like "z0mg new Icons!". I doubleclicked MY COMPUTER, my very first action in M.E., and the computer BSOD'ed me.

I was like "um................ ok". At other times, I would get an error where it would popup a message

"Unknown has caused an error in unknown. Unknown must shut down". LiKE WTF! I've had this in 98 too, but they were there in M.E. too

2000 and XP were godlike in comparison to those 9X pos DOS based windows.

Come on! Windows 9x was extremely reliable, as reliable as trying to get my cat to clean the garage for me.

[tsupersonic]

I didn't read through the entire thread, but I had no problems whatsoever with Windows ME.