What was your biggest problem with Windows ME?

[FiB3R]

I spent more time fixing it than using it, but I never gave up. You get to learn a lot when it all keeps breaking.

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

You know, I was one of those few lucky people who Windows Me just worked great for. It looked slightly prettier than Windows 98, always booted / ran faster, and was more up to date on patches & security so took less time to get up and running after a reinstall (I used to like re-installing Windows all the time back then) - so I have no bad memories of Windows Me! :)

[mclaren05]

For the record, I am 42.

You (and the rest of us) are not people.

[Quillz]

You know, I was one of those few lucky people who Windows Me just worked great for. It looked slightly prettier than Windows 98, always booted / ran faster, and was more up to date on patches & security so took less time to get up and running after a reinstall (I used to like re-installing Windows all the time back then) - so I have no bad memories of Windows Me! :)

I really think you're in the majority here. I've used Windows ME myself and it never crashed. I never owned Windows ME personally, as I simply moved from 98 to XP, but I really don't think Windows ME was all that difficult for the masses. As usual, we tend to hear from a vocal minority, not a silent majority.

[seta-san]

double post from a couple weeks ago__

[Scirwode]

I really think you're in the majority here. I've used Windows ME myself and it never crashed. I never owned Windows ME personally, as I simply moved from 98 to XP, but I really don't think Windows ME was all that difficult for the masses. As usual, we tend to hear from a vocal minority, not a silent majority.

That was my problem with ME, as I never had a problem :p .

Scirwode

[+Tyranade Subscriber²]

The constant lag and BSOD. I reinstalled it SOOOO much i memorised my Product key for it.

[Kralik]

Everything caused a blue screen.

+1 (Y)

[bradavon]

I've never managed to work out why WinME is so hated. I ran it for about a year between 98 SE and XP and it worked perfectly fine for me.

From my perspective it was 98 SE with TSR support removed, which was a good thing. I certainly never found it less stable than the likes of 98 SE. The entire 9x range was buggy as hell but it was a necessary step before we were given Win2000.

It was clearly an afterthought because they couldn't get 2000 Home ready until XP Home shipped but it didn't stop it working perfectly fine for me.

It ran ok on my old Emachine... But Windows 2000 ran much better!

Of course it did. 2000 was based on NT4 and was the basis for XP. It's a stupid comparison really, sorry but it is.

Without a doubt, Vista is (for now) the best Windows OS Microsoft has released :)

I second that. It's bad rep is now 99% unwarranted.

Edited March 11, 2009 by bradavon

[techbeck]

Nothing worked...if u looked at it funny it would crash

[Arkaic]

1. Everything. :laugh:

2. Unstable, Buggy, Crash-ful

3. security holes? more like Security black-holes

4. Unfinished, should have been a beta longer.

5. Win98 was better.

6. I "downgraded" which I considered an upgrade to Windows 2000

[Growled Member]

I with the "everything caused a blue screen." I was so thankful when XP was released.

[andy2004]

was lookng yesterday through an old external harddrive with longhorn screenshots from 2004 and 2005 its fascinating how far windows has come, but yeah I remember ME lol who could forget it !

[Shadrack]

Instability. Thats all I remember of it. I had it installed at home and at work, and it was a huge step back from Win98se.

[Eric Veteran]

Maybe. It was a custom build.

Mine too. I just made sure everything was on the HCL before I installed ME.

[ozgeek]

I never had any problems running ME.

BSODS are generally caused by hardware much more than software so if you get so many BSODs, then your hardware must have sucked. My PC that ran ME was a 500mhz Celeron, 64mb ram and it ran ME great for years.

[Comic Book Guy]

Constant BSoDs, I hardly used it, stuck with Win98SE until I tried Win2K on a friend's computer then installed it onto mine.

[MidnightDevil]

Stability... or the lack of it... lot's of freezing.. specially during a game or so...

[Blazkowicz]

Windows ME worked well, that was with system restore disabled and presumably no driver issue.

the comp with ME got wiped with XP, then ME disk/license were lost.

I regret it in some way : I read that microsoft hacked around the 16bit resource limit, which is the reason I could not stay with windows 98 in the end. (I stuck with 98 for a long time on my computer)

The crippled DOS was my biggest issue with it. There was a patch to allow booting in DOS mode, useful for partition tools or other ; but only very bare DOS is allowed. Windows ME ignores your config.sys and autoexec.bat files and even overwrites them.

That made impossible to play some games which require EMS memory or a lot of conventional memory. (No Xwing / Tie Fighter I believe).

so, there were three years of 98SE use which could have been years of ME use.

ME looks like the refined, final windows 9x.

The one that blue-screens and corrupts itself all the time is windows 95 :D

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

Windows ME for me worked fine, well it was on par with Windows 95. It worked, but only just. I used 95 for the most part until 98 came out, then I used 98SE and used that right up to 2000.

[Malisk]

I've never managed to work out why WinME is so hated. I ran it for about a year between 98 SE and XP and it worked perfectly fine for me.

From my perspective it was 98 SE with TSR support removed, which was a good thing. I certainly never found it less stable than the likes of 98 SE. The entire 9x range was buggy as hell but it was a necessary step before we were given Win2000.

It was clearly an afterthought because they couldn't get 2000 Home ready until XP Home shipped but it didn't stop it working perfectly fine for me.

Of course it did. 2000 was based on NT4 and was the basis for XP. It's a stupid comparison really, sorry but it is.

I second that. It's bad rep is now 99% unwarranted.

No, it's known to have been unusually unstable. A Microsoft representative even said this to phone support staff he trained (my brother at the time being one of those). Something along the lines of that they internally strongly disliked what had became of the OS. :p

Of course, not everyone had problems. I think it depended a lot on how it was being used.

[simonlang]

windows me was fine with me, as well as win98se. that was on a machine where i couldnt even get win2k installed lol

i think most people just read the reports that press made us believing win me sucks and so they thought the same. in reality it had maybe as many/less bugs as win98.

now its the same with win7. press claims its gr8 (and of course it is!) but so was windows vista - but vista was called bad.

[morphen]

That it basically was win98se with dos access from the bootmenu/shutdown menu removed.

and seeing as this was the case, and it still loaded autoexec.bat and config.sys without you beeing able to interact, why did so much software fail to run on it, when it ran in win98/se?

well, either ways, i started using the windows 2000 beta, and never actually used windows ME myself, never had to:p

[Fraud OS 11]

Never had any problems. I had the OEM edition which supported generic OS controlled hibernation. Otherwise the 9x family only support hibernate if specific OEM/computer manufacuter-supplied drivers were installed. The main "problem" was by 2000, people didn't want to see BSODs resulting from a single application crashing their OS and losing work after seeing the stability of Windows 2000. MS or ISVs didn't make it clear that Windows Me wouldn't have full Windows 98 compatibility because of device driver changes or the Windows 2000 network stack. Plus, it fell short of new features, and removed MS-DOS, all as a whole contributed to its hatred.

Most BSODs people encountered on Windows Me was because they upgraded from 9x instead of a clean install or put 98 compatible apps/drivers on Windows Me which didn't always work. A lot of drivers were VXD-based then instead of all being WDM and yet some Windows 98 WDM drivers didn't work with Windows Me (network because of the Windows 2000 network stack Windows Me had and WDM audio/modem). Using VXD drivers disabled power management features like hibernation/standby. I think not enough testing was done for drivers assuming 98 drivers would just work.

[Raa]

Nearly a 3 year old thread, and we're still resurrecting and debating this? :p