I ran a very similar setup back in the day and I think I ended up moving from win98 to win9se and finally to winme and it was always rock solid, never had an issue with winme. It's been years and this is all from memory so might not be 100% right, but I think I had:

P2 450 with a 440BX motherboard
Diamond viper v550 and I think later a v770 with nvidia drivers rather than the diamond ones
Soundblaster Live 4.1, I think although I may be wrong but it was definitely a creative card and I think it was the 4.1 card as it was coupled with the cambridge soundworks four point surround speakers.
I think there was even a netgear fa series 10/100 ethernet adapter in there as well at some point, I think it was an fa310 but again I might be wrong

It was rock solid,, a daily driver gaming machine and the bsod's were extremely rare, I think the intel/nvidia combo was well liked by ME.

chinny22 wrote on 2023-02-06, 14:30:

We forget that bluescreens where just a normal part of life upto the XP era. [..]

With the exception of Windows 3.1x, maybe. It was rock solid in Standard-Mode, at least. 😄 👍

Windows 9x is another thing maybe. Especially on post-486 hardware.
PCI bus, ACPI, APM, APIC, AGP, USB etc. All buggy technologies, originally.
On a plain AT-mainboard with ISA and VLB slots and a normal CPU (below 100 MHz),
Windows 95 ran okay, I think.

OS/ Warp also was sort of stable. Version 2.1 and Warp 3 were popular for a couple of years before Windows 95.
The problem with the frozen GUI, triggered by buggy DOS/Win applications, was solved in Warp 4, too.
OS/2 was useful as a DOS replacement with quick HDD access (cache, HPFS), as a multi-tasker, to run games in a window,
as a platform for early computer/console emulators.. Sysops ran BBSes on OS/2, too! They knew what was good.

Windows 1.x and 2.x on original hardware were kind of stable, too,
but many sophisticated Windows applications ran out of conventional memory quickly.
It wasn't until Windows/386 that Windows became sort of mainstream first time.

Edit:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-02-06, 21:42:

Windows ME is Windows 98SE with installed bloatware, gimped DOS mode and questionable stability with VXD driver model. Hardly best what 9x can offer =P

Microsoft added a lot of Windows 2000 concepts and code snippets over to Windows Me in a copy&paste style.
For example, the Windows Desktop is from Windows 2000, the network stack resembles Windows 2000 rather than Windows 98SE..
98 still relied on Winipcfg, for example. Me added support for USB pen drives, the driver library is being copied to HDD..

What it also did was focusing on WDM drivers and removing all VXDs that weren't absolutely needed.
However, Me can still handle VXDs just fine. And Windows 3.1x drivers (*.DRV, *.386).

Moving away from VXDs was just natural, the future was WDM. Universally.
The same happened to the old NT driver model at same time, essentially. It had to go.

Windows Me, 2k/XP were nolonger using drivers that are so.. static.
Changing devices or video settings nolonger required a reboot, for example.

Personally, I consider Windows Me a gift, a giveaway, a gimmick to help users to hold out. To reduce waiting times for the next real Windows release.
Windows Me was shortlived and no one was forced to use it. Some PCs of the time shipped with Windows 98SE and a Me upgrade.
If the user was lucky, both the 98SE CD and the Me CD were in the plastic bag.
So nothing was lost. Windows Me rather was meant to ease the transition away from DOS and crashy VXDs.

The auto-restoration of Autoexec.bat and Config.sys were annoying to us, sure.
But let's think about helpless people who were exposed to bloatware or buggy software that messed up the boot files ?
There were many programs that installed *things* and caused Windows to stop during boot.

Edit: Or worse - those socalled "PC experts" from the neighborhood, of the circle of friends or family who applied their 1985 knowledge of "IBM PCs" to a year 2000 PC.
I know those folks, believe me. They love to apply all of their dangerous, outdated half-knowledge to "fix" things, to make things go faster etc.
Or as we say in Germany "verschlimmbessern" (better-worsing?) - making something even worse, by trying to improve it.
Let's imagine what happened if they succesfully installed some old copy of SmartDrive, a 1990 PC Tools/Symantec HDD cache,
a video speeder from the CGA days, a tool to slow down RAM refreshing (XT days), a DOS-based antivirus guard, a floppy speeder tool, a Windows 3.1 RAM doubler, etc.
Windows Me prevented this sabotage by always using clean files. Users nolonger were stuck in the cryptic DOS environment.
Scandisk also was in GUI mode from now on. To many users all this was a relief.

And to be honest, me, too. If only a true expert or mentally clear, logically thinking user can disable this auto-restoration, only then it works.
- Otherwise, first thing those wannabe experts do is disabling all safety options.
Which maybe make all things work on a superficial level, but is somewhat irresponsible and anti-social on a larger scale.

--
That's why I can understand why Microsoft nolonger allows certain things in home user editions of modern Windows:
The users do repeatedly disable all the safety protocols, just like the crewmen love to do on holodeck on starship Enterprise/Voyager. 😁
End users.. They are like inexperienced kids, they must be protected from them self. As presumptuous as that may sound!

In the past, I was often asked to fix PCs. As I learned over the years: They never tell you the truth as to why the PC broke.
The official story always is: "No idea." or "There was some update, the PC was doing it all alone."
They also never tell you that another friend/acquaintance messed the PC up again after you succsefully fixed it and left the scene last time.
That's what bothered me the most. I wasn't asking for money, there was no need to lie to me. But they did, nevertheless.
This approach is mean in sofar, because they blame you for a failure that wasn't yours.
It also costs time, because you check things over and over you didn't mess up, which were working.
--

In retrospect, Me as a product even made sense, maybe.
I mean, we are the weirdo's here with our affection to VXD drivers, MS-DOS and mid-90s hardware. 😄
We are looking backwards, Windows Me was made to look forwards (in its time).

Speaking of time.. It's in its name. Windows Me was the Millenium release.
Microsoft had to release *something* in 2000, just for the sake of it.
As a company, you simply can't miss out on this oportunity.

Edit: I was just thinking out loud here. I didn't mean to criticize you guys in any way. There was no reason to, anyway.

Somewhat as others have stated, most of the "issues" WinME had were on machines with integrated sound and/or video and the crappy drivers the OEM's supplied for them (remember how bad some of the Compaqs, HPs and Packard Bell's were for their "family" line of PC's). Some of it was older software as well. Mostly drivers from what I remember. OEMs rarely took the time to update anything and if they did, you'd have to hunt them down or go directly to the vendor's website and have a try with their drivers.

I honestly never had an issue with ME running it in the later P3 era with Soundblaster and Nvidia cards on an Intel chipset. Every now and then some piece of software would blue screen the system, but this happened in Win95 and 98SE as well.

And on this note, I've been running a Win95 OSR2.5 machine with "good" hardware and drivers and have yet to have the machine crash without fault of the piece of software I was running. It's been remarkably stable and I chalk a lot of that up to the hardware and mature drivers I've been running on it.

Yep, even though that computer is long lost for trying again, I don't think a "base" install (OEM disc that seems very close to MS original + Matrox G450 + some ESS PCI card + Conexant PCI softmodem) was problematic, it rather was the addition of sketchy keyboard drivers (KeyMaestro, with that blue and yellow caterpillarish icon, remember that one?), Boeder USB scanner from supermarket offer, Agfa CL20 digital camera, Lexmark Z52 printer, and assorted software from Tuttogratis and magazine CDs!

Or of course that time I set the DPI to the maximum ~500 and couldn't change it back 😜

No problems yet on a certainly less used but also lower reputation system...

So, what is the #1 rule to have a stable Windows Millenium Edition PC?

My guess would be to never turn the pc on.

I used Me when it came out on an Athlon 750 socket 462 and maybe 128mb or 256mb ram, and it was very stable. Nowadays, I tried to stick to Win98SE because a most people says it is better than Me but on newer computers Me is far better I guess because of the WDM drivers, So I use Me on all the computers I have that are meant for 9x and are newer than Socket S7 or Slot.
On my Socket 754 computer I've tried all I've imagined to get a stable Win98SE install, and it was impossible, but with Me, it was all smooth to install and configure, and what's better, it is very stable, and I never had to reinstall the OS.
So I think that the best way to get a stable Me installation is to use hardware that has WDM drivers.

LSS10999 wrote on 2023-02-07, 03:08:

The recently discovered IO.SYS and COMMAND.COM inside WinME's DTA files (OOBE-related) are not necessarily hacks. These were actually official MS binaries but for some reasons access to real-mode DOS were retained for these variants.

I was unaware of this, can you provide a link please

If we set up a side by side competition and installed a few apps, installed a few games, upgraded a few versions of things, uninstalled a program or 2. I can guarantee 98SE would be fine and ME would crap its pants.

Shagittarius wrote on 2023-02-08, 01:48:

If we set up a side by side competition and installed a few apps, installed a few games, upgraded a few versions of things, uninstalled a program or 2. I can guarantee 98SE would be fine and ME would crap its pants.

When ME was used as a "daily driver" back in the day I could see this, but at this point in time no one really operates their vintage PC and vintage O/S like that. It's quite easy to get a very stable version of ME with the games/apps you want on it centered around hardware that's known to have good ME drivers.

People still think in terms of 2000-2001 era but no one uses such a computer like that anymore.

If I absolutely had to choose I'd choose 98SE, but that's not to say that ME doesn't have its merits with certain hardware or use cases. Back then we were all wondering "what is the point of this release" but 20+ years later and I'm glad to have another 9x O/S to play around with.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2023-02-08, 01:22:

LSS10999 wrote on 2023-02-07, 03:08:

The recently discovered IO.SYS and COMMAND.COM inside WinME's DTA files (OOBE-related) are not necessarily hacks. These were actually official MS binaries but for some reasons access to real-mode DOS were retained for these variants.

I was unaware of this, can you provide a link please

I tinkered with those files, and it fared much better. I was able to load QEMM 97, but DOSDATA and DOS-Up aren't compatible with MS-DOS 8.0.

Still, there isn't a way to run it without the integrated XMS driver disabled for Zone 66 and LIMITMEM.SYS. 🙁

Well, there are a lot of old "gurus" that only look at what they used and knew, my point of view is like this; the world is far bigger than me and there are a lot of facts that become false as time passes.
Windows Me was better than Win98SE in some things and worse in others, always keep in mind that WinMe is newer, and they were trying to move forward I guess that MS realized that 640k RAM weren't useful for a lot of things in the year 2000, and they were trying to leave DOS in the past. A lot of DOS games and apps run well on a 1Ghz CPU, but there are also a lot that don't work at all with ought to have to put a lot of effort on it.
I see WinMe as the first "only Windows" Microsoft OS, and I use it on computers meant to run only Windows games and apps, in the gray area I use Win98SE, my gray area starts with PMMX and ends around 550Mhz CPU and 256mb RAM cacheable, for the area between PMMX and 486, win 95, for 486 and 386 Win 3.11, and for anything older, only DOS.

If I want to play the DOS version of some random game, I'll try it first on a PMMX because from my experience and my luck, I think that Me doesn't make any sense for a PMMX and Win98SE would be a lot better, but WinMe would be better for an Athlon XP, I don't really care about benchmark that show a 2% difference or something like that, I want something that works as fast and easy as possible. One simple thing that I consider a lot is the fact that WinMe has support for USB storage without having to install anything, and after all the famous NUSB driver is only the drivers from Me with something more I guess.

But my point of view may be valid only because I have more than one computer.
So a lot of people shouldn't or wouldn't care about what I've said.

_tk wrote on 2023-02-08, 07:44:

When ME was used as a "daily driver" back in the day I could see this, but at this point in time no one really operates their vi […]
Show full quote

Shagittarius wrote on 2023-02-08, 01:48:

If we set up a side by side competition and installed a few apps, installed a few games, upgraded a few versions of things, uninstalled a program or 2. I can guarantee 98SE would be fine and ME would crap its pants.

When ME was used as a "daily driver" back in the day I could see this, but at this point in time no one really operates their vintage PC and vintage O/S like that. It's quite easy to get a very stable version of ME with the games/apps you want on it centered around hardware that's known to have good ME drivers.

People still think in terms of 2000-2001 era but no one uses such a computer like that anymore.

If I absolutely had to choose I'd choose 98SE, but that's not to say that ME doesn't have its merits with certain hardware or use cases. Back then we were all wondering "what is the point of this release" but 20+ years later and I'm glad to have another 9x O/S to play around with.

I think you have hit on the reason why people mistakenly think ME is stable. It's because they install ME, install a game, play the game, then barely ever touch the PC again. For anyone who actually tried to use the machine as more than a retro time capsule they would quickly find what a POS ME is.

My 98SE has over 100 games installed all with supporting software and other utilities and it doesn't blue screen. I also run it on what is considered to be an unstable configuration utilizing the ASROCK 4Core-dual VSTA board with a X3230, yet I haven't had any problems.

I don't doubt that ME is more stable at the end of its life than the beginning, I just think an OS where you still have to disable default features still has plenty of reasons not to run it, other than curiosity.

Shagittarius wrote on 2023-02-08, 14:45:

_tk wrote on 2023-02-08, 07:44:

When ME was used as a "daily driver" back in the day I could see this, but at this point in time no one really operates their vi […]
Show full quote

Shagittarius wrote on 2023-02-08, 01:48:

If we set up a side by side competition and installed a few apps, installed a few games, upgraded a few versions of things, uninstalled a program or 2. I can guarantee 98SE would be fine and ME would crap its pants.

When ME was used as a "daily driver" back in the day I could see this, but at this point in time no one really operates their vintage PC and vintage O/S like that. It's quite easy to get a very stable version of ME with the games/apps you want on it centered around hardware that's known to have good ME drivers.

People still think in terms of 2000-2001 era but no one uses such a computer like that anymore.

If I absolutely had to choose I'd choose 98SE, but that's not to say that ME doesn't have its merits with certain hardware or use cases. Back then we were all wondering "what is the point of this release" but 20+ years later and I'm glad to have another 9x O/S to play around with.

I think you have hit on the reason why people mistakenly think ME is stable. It's because they install ME, install a game, play the game, then barely ever touch the PC again. For anyone who actually tried to use the machine as more than a retro time capsule they would quickly find what a POS ME is.

My 98SE has over 100 games installed all with supporting software and other utilities and it doesn't blue screen. I also run it on what is considered to be an unstable configuration utilizing the ASROCK 4Core-dual VSTA board with a X3230, yet I haven't had any problems.

I played and finished multiple games on WinME last year, never had a blue screen or crash, i didn't do anything related to production or internet related but for gaming Me is pretty good.

_tk wrote on 2023-02-08, 07:44:

When ME was used as a "daily driver" back in the day I could see this, but at this point in time no one really operates their vi […]
Show full quote

Shagittarius wrote on 2023-02-08, 01:48:

If we set up a side by side competition and installed a few apps, installed a few games, upgraded a few versions of things, uninstalled a program or 2. I can guarantee 98SE would be fine and ME would crap its pants.

When ME was used as a "daily driver" back in the day I could see this, but at this point in time no one really operates their vintage PC and vintage O/S like that. It's quite easy to get a very stable version of ME with the games/apps you want on it centered around hardware that's known to have good ME drivers.

People still think in terms of 2000-2001 era but no one uses such a computer like that anymore.

If I absolutely had to choose I'd choose 98SE, but that's not to say that ME doesn't have its merits with certain hardware or use cases. Back then we were all wondering "what is the point of this release" but 20+ years later and I'm glad to have another 9x O/S to play around with.

Yes, the press leading up to the release of WinME at the time was asking the question, "what is the point"? It was a valid question. Just like MS killed WinME by giving it a bad rep by sowing the bad press seeds, they also gave an answer to why before they announced a WinME. Some years earlier (97?) they were promising essentially a release of a home user OS every year. But just as Windows 96 was cancelled (turned into smaller OEM release Win95B), Windows 98 was delayed to 1998 and that release really did have some issues too, then we got a quick follow up of Win98SE minor release in 1999 to clean that up. Then WinXP (Whistler) was delayed, which was supposed to move everyone to a non-DOS supporting, NT kernel. So they ordered WinME for the year 2000, with very similar user feature specs. That is WinME! When you realize this, then everything about it fits perfectly.

And yes, internally at Microsoft, the engineers hated that move, which is where the hate ultimately started from. After all, they had a point. Windows 2000 was pretty darn good, but it wasn't marketed to the home user.

Looking back I had mixed feelings about it due to the press and the horrible system restore (which got patched too). But after a little while using it then, since we did have it, it was ok! Not as lean as Win95, but all the usability upgrades were pretty good, and the desktop update that IE4/98 was semi undone and followed the better Win2000 style. Now I'm thinking WinME is a good thing it did happen, because it actually is still a mostly DOS compatible OS that gave some more life to it on even newer machines!

If they opened sourced the kernel code to patch out autoloading himem and open sourced some of the old DOS utilities to remove the version locking, then a full DOS 8.0 would be a real thing with very little effort. An option in MSDOS.SYS to control himem would be perfect! As far as the boot menu thing, I don't know. Sure you can splice it in, but you could write your own driver to do a boot menu, maybe? I stopped using boot menus about ~95.

Shagittarius wrote on 2023-02-08, 14:45:

I think you have hit on the reason why people mistakenly think ME is stable. It's because they install ME, install a game, play […]
Show full quote

_tk wrote on 2023-02-08, 07:44:

When ME was used as a "daily driver" back in the day I could see this, but at this point in time no one really operates their vi […]
Show full quote

Shagittarius wrote on 2023-02-08, 01:48:

If we set up a side by side competition and installed a few apps, installed a few games, upgraded a few versions of things, uninstalled a program or 2. I can guarantee 98SE would be fine and ME would crap its pants.

When ME was used as a "daily driver" back in the day I could see this, but at this point in time no one really operates their vintage PC and vintage O/S like that. It's quite easy to get a very stable version of ME with the games/apps you want on it centered around hardware that's known to have good ME drivers.

People still think in terms of 2000-2001 era but no one uses such a computer like that anymore.

If I absolutely had to choose I'd choose 98SE, but that's not to say that ME doesn't have its merits with certain hardware or use cases. Back then we were all wondering "what is the point of this release" but 20+ years later and I'm glad to have another 9x O/S to play around with.

I think you have hit on the reason why people mistakenly think ME is stable. It's because they install ME, install a game, play the game, then barely ever touch the PC again. For anyone who actually tried to use the machine as more than a retro time capsule they would quickly find what a POS ME is.

My 98SE has over 100 games installed all with supporting software and other utilities and it doesn't blue screen. I also run it on what is considered to be an unstable configuration utilizing the ASROCK 4Core-dual VSTA board with a X3230, yet I haven't had any problems.

I don't doubt that ME is more stable at the end of its life than the beginning, I just think an OS where you still have to disable default features still has plenty of reasons not to run it, other than curiosity.

Interesting..

the3dfxdude wrote on 2023-02-08, 15:24:

Yes, the press leading up to the release of WinME at the time was asking the question, "what is the point"? It was a valid quest […]
Show full quote

_tk wrote on 2023-02-08, 07:44:

When ME was used as a "daily driver" back in the day I could see this, but at this point in time no one really operates their vi […]
Show full quote

Shagittarius wrote on 2023-02-08, 01:48:

If we set up a side by side competition and installed a few apps, installed a few games, upgraded a few versions of things, uninstalled a program or 2. I can guarantee 98SE would be fine and ME would crap its pants.

When ME was used as a "daily driver" back in the day I could see this, but at this point in time no one really operates their vintage PC and vintage O/S like that. It's quite easy to get a very stable version of ME with the games/apps you want on it centered around hardware that's known to have good ME drivers.

People still think in terms of 2000-2001 era but no one uses such a computer like that anymore.

If I absolutely had to choose I'd choose 98SE, but that's not to say that ME doesn't have its merits with certain hardware or use cases. Back then we were all wondering "what is the point of this release" but 20+ years later and I'm glad to have another 9x O/S to play around with.

Yes, the press leading up to the release of WinME at the time was asking the question, "what is the point"? It was a valid question. Just like MS killed WinME by giving it a bad rep by sowing the bad press seeds, they also gave an answer to why before they announced a WinME. Some years earlier (97?) they were promising essentially a release of a home user OS every year. But just as Windows 96 was cancelled (turned into smaller OEM release Win95B), Windows 98 was delayed to 1998 and that release really did have some issues too, then we got a quick follow up of Win98SE minor release in 1999 to clean that up. Then WinXP (Whistler) was delayed, which was supposed to move everyone to a non-DOS supporting, NT kernel. So they ordered WinME for the year 2000, with very similar user feature specs. That is WinME! When you realize this, then everything about it fits perfectly.

And yes, internally at Microsoft, the engineers hated that move, which is where the hate ultimately started from. After all, they had a point. Windows 2000 was pretty darn good, but it wasn't marketed to the home user.

Looking back I had mixed feelings about it due to the press and the horrible system restore (which got patched too). But after a little while using it then, since we did have it, it was ok! Not as lean as Win95, but all the usability upgrades were pretty good, and the desktop update that IE4/98 was semi undone and followed the better Win2000 style. Now I'm thinking WinME is a good thing it did happen, because it actually is still a mostly DOS compatible OS that gave some more life to it on even newer machines!

If they opened sourced the kernel code to patch out autoloading himem and open sourced some of the old DOS utilities to remove the version locking, then a full DOS 8.0 would be a real thing with very little effort. An option in MSDOS.SYS to control himem would be perfect! As far as the boot menu thing, I don't know. Sure you can splice it in, but you could write your own driver to do a boot menu, maybe? I stopped using boot menus about ~95.

I agree with you. From hindsight I'm also happy WinME got released.
One odd thing one could contemplate on is what we would have thought had MS not released this '98TE'. We might have ended up thinking 98TE would have been even more amazing than 98SE already was.
WinME in some ways seems more like a sidegrade rather than an upgrade. Or at least that's how I kinda see 98SE and ME today.
Personally I'm happy MS ended up trying to give WinME more modern features rather than trying to do another DOS based OS. Across all years, WinME is one of my most used OSs, together with WinXP (and to a lesser extend Win7).

Shagittarius wrote on 2023-02-08, 14:45:

I think you have hit on the reason why people mistakenly think ME is stable. It's because they install ME, install a game, play the game, then barely ever touch the PC again. For anyone who actually tried to use the machine as more than a retro time capsule they would quickly find what a POS ME is.

This. Back in the day ME was a PITA if you really used it with a lot of different hardware/drivers/games/programs. The frequent blue screens forced me to go back to Windows 98SE after a couple of months.

Indeed it's very stable now on my showcase pc with all the latest drivers and patches but that was not really an option back then.