Microsoft Windows Me Millennium Edition

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Danisa Southmayd

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Aug 3, 2024, 1:48:11 PM8/3/24

to distnehtaca

Nie tylko, jak widzicie, w tym trudność, że nie zdołacie wejść na moją grę, lecz i w tym, że ja do was cały zejść nie mogę, gdyż schodząc, gubię po drodze to, co miałem donieść.

WinME seems like the obvious choice for anyone who wants a Win9x system but does not plan to use it for pure DOS mode. I really don't think it's any less stable than 98SE, and it has more features out-of -the-box. It should still be good for running DOS games from a Windows DOS prompt (if the games behave well in such a scenario). Many of the "ultra-high-end" Win98 SE rigs that people build here (without any intent to use them for DOS games) would probably be better with WinME, and the only reason people don't choose it more, is because it's hard to get over one's prejudices (or the idea doesn't even cross their mind due to the crowd opinion).

I think it's like a lottery.
With certain hardware Windows ME may work fine, thus for those who don't need fully-functional DOS, it may be "good enough".
With other hardware, however, there may be no way to make Windows ME stable due to lack of dedicated ME drivers.

Microsoft made a huge mistake there: first they announced they are about to discontinue the DOS-based Windows, but then they released yet another version, with enough changes to break compatibility with earlier drivers and other software.
Now, do you really expect all the hardware vendors providing updated drivers for a product that was pretty much announced "dead" before it got released?

And not without reason.
There was plenty of problems with Windows XP, but some of them were later resolved with Service Packs, and some ceased to be relevant with the advent of new hardware and software, designed primarilly for XP.

But I doubt if there was ever any product designed primarily for ME.
Even Microsoft didn't seem to care, they quickly released XP and aggresively pushed it to the home market, as if they wanted to forget about ME.

With certain hardware Windows ME may work fine, thus for those who don't need fully-functional DOS, it may be "good enough".
With other hardware, however, there may be no way to make Windows ME stable due to lack of dedicated ME drivers.

What was actually broken in driver compatibility? I have not encountered a Win98 driver that did not work on WinME, but I confess I haven't tried a wide variety of systems. I understand that VxDs are problematic, but why? What changed?

I'm not sure if there were any Windows 98 drivers which didn't work with ME at all, it's more like they did work, but with some random glitches.
But there surely was some software that worked fine under 98, but not at all under ME - from what I recall from that era, probably the most annoying was incompatibility with Lantastic and Novell client software, I don't know what exactly caused the problem - some drivers? Or some userspace components?

There are things I like about windows Millennium I'd like to share.
More memory capacity - I have run it on a 2GB RAM system; I have patched it to support up to 4gb.
Updated file system features - FDISK FORMAT can see larger disks, windows defrag fastest out of all windows 9x editions.
UPNP - Easily set up with internet router NAT not as good as XP but it does work.
But I found so little unofficial enhancements by the dos windows communities. I decided to step up from it.
An interesting thing I like to do is install windows 98se then run autopatcher 2007 sp2.
I then install windows me step up and totally disable system protection and restore after.(this keeps some goodies from
Autopatcher in the step up process and then allows theme patching)
I patch the themes to have media player 10 skin on media layer 9 and have windows 7 super bar. (only with protection perma disabled)
And thats not all, I get the windows shutdown music from 98plus! for the high colour theme i find it less depressing (will attach later)
By disabling the protection, it brings millennium just over 98se performace score. (a small margin)
importing SFC from 98SE gives the old manual way of system file checking which isn't too much protection.
I may try to enhance shell animations one day but I hate playing with resource hacking its so tedious perhaps someone might like to put those crystal file transfer animations in dialog boxes etc?
Attached picture is my virtual machine version its just so I don't have to run around switching between PC's to show some eye candy.
As clearly shown not quite 2gb ram support as this one I didn't patch the memory capacity support. Notice the size and colour thats in virtualbox not their driver ?
I have found a way to unlock full dos mode just when it boots it says "windows millennium emergency boot mode" put up with that on startup its just like good ol 98 dos. Plenty of education on google.

But didn't it have the same 512MB ram limitation of the cache of previous Win9x? I always used it with 512MB for that reason cause I never liked the many unofficial tweaks for the ram problem cause I don't know how stable they are.