What's wrong with Win ME? (1 Viewer)

[teapot2001]

I was using Win 98 until I tried upgrading to XP Pro yesterday. With XP installed, I encountered some compatibility problems (Adaptec CD creater, DVD drive won't play DVDs, etc). That was fine with me, but then I tried downloading a fix for my keyboard from HP, and my system started to become extremely slow (Athlon 700Mhz, 128 MB RAM). I restarted the system several times, but the system was still slow, as opposed to operating fine before the keyboard fix download. It was basically unusable; I tried looking at the running processes and applications, but that window, or any window, was hardly usable. I then tried to use my system recovery CD to reinstall Win 98, but halfway into the installation, there is a problem with the CD drive or the CD itself as it reports (the CD had worked before). I tried this again and again without success. Then my system has a fatal error on start up that requires me to shut it down before it gets to Windows. My only option at this point was to install Win ME from DOS. Everything seems fine now, except that all my files in the My Documents folder are gone. I tried installing XP again, but now there is a problem where it freezes at 59% during the analyzing system phase. I don't know why I'm having all of these problems. So I guess I'm stuck with ME for a while. I'd just like to know why people don't like this OS? From the short period I spent with XP, I liked it a lot, and I am planning on upgrading my memory by 256 MB.

~T

 

[Glenn Overholt]

It all depends upon your equipment. Some hardware has not been 'XP' approved, so if you have anything else, you may run into problems.

From what I understand, if all of your hardware has been XP approved, you will get a much more stable machine, but more often then not, you have to have a 'new' machine in order to meet the XP specs. I hope that helps, even as simple as it was.

Glenn

 

[Tony-B]

ME is fine. I have ran it for almost two years now, with only one or two major problems.

 

[Bill.P]

Don't you just love computers. They save so much time in our modern lives...

In general, upgrades are problematic. I always remove all partitions and do a fresh install of any OS.

-Bill

 

[teapot2001]

Okay, now I have Win 98 back. I lowered my CD drive's cache all the way to small. Although the recovery CD didn't complete its installation, having the same error as it had before, enough files made it so that Windows appears (I received 2 or 3 missing files errors).

Do you guys think there could be a problem with my CD and DVD drives (I tried installing the OS's from both) then? With Win ME, I wasn't able to eject the CD drive and had to do it from the BIOS menu. And the CDs worked fine until I upgraded to XP. I looked at the drives' status, and everything seems fine, though.

~T

 

[Glenn Overholt]

That sounds like an incompatible CD driver, but you might want to try this out.
Copy the Win98 CD to your hard drive and load it up from there. I've done this with several programs, and it works just great.

Glenn

 

[teapot2001]

Win 98 is part of my HP recovery CD that can only be used from boot up.

~T

 

[Chad Ellinger]

In general, upgrades are problematic. I always remove all partitions and do a fresh install of any OS.

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. If you can get your computer to a state where you can back up your essential files (My Documents, Email, Internet Favorites, etc.), I HIGHLY recommend that you re-format your PC and try installing XP from scratch. I have successfully installed XP on computers with much lower specs than yours (not officially "XP-approved" hardware, either), and the system runs fine.

As for Windows ME, you may or may not run into problems, but it is generally agreed that 98 is a more stable OS.

 

[Colin Dunn]

I second the recommendation of moving to a fresh install of WinXP. It is worth the effort to get a stable installation of XP Pro working on a machine.

WinME is based on the same warmed-over DOS technology that Win98 and Win95 used. It does give you some newer hardware support and a Win2K-like shell, but it's still Win9x under the hood. The Win9x series (including ME) lacks the extensive memory protections that WinNT/2K/XP provide.

Win9x has the 128K "system resources" area, which fills up REALLY fast; the result is 'out of memory' errors when you open multiple apps, even if you have 512MB+ RAM. (I still see this problem plaguing businesses that cheaped out and didn't buy Win2K/XP Pro for their workstations.)

Networking features are also cut down in the Win9x series; it may be OK for peer-to-peer file sharing with no security, and for Net surfing, but if you do much more than that (server-based apps, security, aggregation of systems into domains), you will want XP Pro on your workstations and Win2K Server on your server(s).

Driver/hardware support for anything older than WinXP and Linux will likely phase out starting in the middle part of 2003, so I say go with the newest OS that you can run stably and with decent performance on your machine.

To get a good XP install, I suggest the following:
- Update your system BIOS to the latest available.
- Update firmware for any peripherals that support firmware updates (this is more likely an issue for servers than PC workstations).
- Get the latest drivers for all your peripherals and burn them to a CD in readable form (i.e., no ZIP files unless you install WinZIP first).
- Install WinXP. Take the drivers that it gives you to start out.
- Update with your drivers you downloaded and burned to CD. If any drivers cause problems, boot to the "Last Known Good" configuration (if you can't even log on) or use a "restore point" (if you did log on and obliterated your LastKnownGood) to roll back to an earlier configuration.
- Once you have basic OS and drivers working well, install your apps.
- Once you have reached a fairly static configuration (all your apps and Web gadgets installed), defrag your hard drive and run the BootVIS tool (available for download on Microsoft's site). These will greatly speed up your boot process. Don't do these things until all your apps are loaded, or you'll just have to it over again after you make your system changes...