george001

Hello

About 3 years ago I bought a used copy of Win ME. I have used Win98
since 98 or 99. I planned to upgrade to ME when I bought that cd.
Several people told me not to upgrade. They said that ME contains too
many bugs and I should stick to 98.

I have an old 300mhz computer and installed ME on it just to see what
it does. At first I did not see much difference from 98. Lately I
have used it several times, because friends give me flash drives and
98 wont run them because I dont have the drivers. ME reads them
without any trouble. So, for now, I have to change all my external
components to that spare computer, copy all the stuff from the flash
drive, then copy it to my own flash drive (which I have a w98 driver
for), and then transfer the files to my 98 machine with my own flash
drive. As I do this, I am seeing several other improvements in ME
that are lacking in 98.

I'd like the truth. Is ME all that bad? I'd like to upgrade, but
dont want hassles and crashes. 98 works pretty well for me. Sure, I
already know someone is going to tell me to upgrade to XP or Vista.
First, I am running a pentium 700mhz (as my main computer). Not the
fastest computer around. Second, I just do not like XP. It's too
different from 98, and I really dont care to relearn my OS, not to
mention that XP takes away too many user options, and I like to setup
my own computer as I did with Dos and Win3.x in the past. I dont need
the extra power of XP since I really only use the computer for
internet and some basic office things. No games, and aside from some
photo editing, nothing that really needs power. Therefore, XP is out
of the question.

I think I'd like ME though. If for no other reason, just so I dont
have to keep installing drivers.

What are the problems with ME that dont exist in 98?
What are the other major improvements in ME over 98?
What else should I know?

Finally, is it possible to install ME on top of 98? I have many
programs installed and I really dont care to reinstall all of them.
I'd like to just leave my system as it is, and install ME on top of
what I have, with the hopes that all my software still works. Is that
possible? (of course I'll do a backup first).

Thanks for all help and feedback.

George

bruce coryell

I use ME myself on one of my machines and love it. It is the last
version on Win 9x, and also represents the last incarnation of MS-DOS
(version 8.0) - not many people know that all versions of Win 9x are
actually based on DOS. Microsoft killed support for this OS last
summer so we're on our own now.

I don't think it's possible to dual boot both 98 and ME, but you can
dual-boot ME with XP.

mathedman@hotmail.com.cut

It is possible to multiplel boot 2 DOS-based operating systems along
with any number of nonDOS OS's

mark lloyd

It's OK. Too many people repeat stuff they don't know without even thinking about it.

I used ME for several years (and still have it on one computer that's
too old and slow for any NT-based Windows). It has always worked as
good as 98 except for the bloated, unreliable, and unhelpful "help"
system.

It does provide support for USB storage devices. No driver is required for one.


It'd avoid either. Windows 2000 is good if your computer can handle
it. 2000 is very similar to XP, but without some of the unfeatures
(such as the bootup weaklink misleadingly called "activation", and the extra-confusing UI).

I currently have 6 PCs. The CPUs are:

1. 80486SX 25MHz
2. Pentium 166MHz
3. Celeron 333MHz
4. Celeron 366MHz
5. Pentium M 1.73GHz
6. Pentium IV 3GHz

#1 won't run Windows later than 95, and does that poorly. I seldom use
it for anything. #2 is too slow for any NT-based Windows (such as
2000, XP, or Vista) and runs ME. The others run Windows 2000. I have
XP only as a dual boot on #6 for occasional use.

XP does that, and makes others more complicated. One reason I use
2000, the best version of Windows.

The only one I can think of right now is the difficult and unhelpful "help" system.


Not many. It does support USB drives automatically.


Yes, but such a think is a bad idea. REMOVE the old OS before
installing a new one. Installing ME over 98 probably will work
(considering these are very similar), but you'll get a better system
if you start fresh rather than maintaining all damage your existing system has.

Probably, but don't forget to make that backup.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.laughingsquid.com

"All your western theologies, the whole mythology of them,
are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent."
-- Tennessee Williams

philo

<snip>

Though I never used WinME on a regular basis...
if you do a clean install...it tends to work OK.
Since I'm mainly an experimenter I've found that ME does not seem to handle
hardware changes as well
as windows98..

Personally...I'd not use it...
if you have another partition...or want to install another HD
you can install win2k and dual boot.
Win2k and winME take about the same amount of resources...but win2k is a
considerably more reliable OS...

If you do go with win2k you will need to apply the latest service pack and
about 50 updates however!

rayzor

You want the truth its sh1te worst they made

elly byrne

I have run ME for years. It has always had some kind of glitch that I
could not put my finger on. Things disappear for no reason, things
change for no reason. Only yesterday my volume control disappeared
from the systray and I had to switch it back on. Even when I do a
clean reinstal something is never right.


How often fo you have to do that?


If you instal ME on top of 98 you will still have to reinstal all your
programs as the registry will be changed. You can keep your programs
where they are and any details in their directories will remain. But
the registry will change.


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

mathedman@hotmail.com.cut

What do you mean "all that bad". If it does what you want it isn't
bad at all!
I've used it and XP Pro (avoid Vista until some of the bugs are
fixed!) for several years. However, I had auto updates on so many bug
fixes were done automatically. The original source disk still has those bugs!

jad

truth in this instance can only be ones experiences with ME.
I used ME from its debut till current time. I used it in a commercial printing business
for 6 years.(very small files) until the need for a NTFS then I switched to XP. WinMe
never gave me any problems unless it was a hardware driver issue. Because users bitched so
much about that being ME's fault (it was not) we now have XP and vistas hardcore driver
scrutiny and much stricter compatibility list.\

ardent

Like everyone else I was also carried away by the remarks on ME and
dropped the CDin the bottom drawer :-(

Then I accidentally landed at the http://www.mdgx.com where a lot of
corrections are provided to make ME work better.

Two of the are (1)Restore and (2) PC Health

The site provides also links to software that can remove these.

Once that is done ME works wonderfully well - No BSOD in over a year
since I resurrected the CDand installed it.

There is no dearth of software.

HTH

Archer