Where do newer motherboard chipsets like the Intel 855 fit into that? Remind me, what is the alternative to ACPI? I keep thinking of ACHI...

kithylin wrote:

You listed 128 GB Hard drive... Will WinME do this and run okay? (Win98 SE for example, almost absolutely requires 20GB partition/drive for where it's installed / root, or it starts getting 'stupid' and unstable)

98SE is fine up to 127.5 GiB. The one problem is the RTM version of FDISK only shows capacities up to 64 GiB, but does the job regardless.

firage wrote:

kithylin wrote:

You listed 128 GB Hard drive... Will WinME do this and run okay? (Win98 SE for example, almost absolutely requires 20GB partition/drive for where it's installed / root, or it starts getting 'stupid' and unstable)

98SE is fine up to 127.5 GiB. The one problem is the RTM version of FDISK only shows capacities up to 64GB, but does the job regardless.

This is all off-topic for here.. but no, Win98SE absolutely must have maximum 20GB as the OS drive it's installed to. If you go past that, then "Drivers fail to install" and installed programs randomly crash and the entire system gets quite unstable. Secondary partitions can be anything up to the 2TB FAT32 limit though.

Source: me with way too much time on my hands and installing Win98SE on tons of hard drives to figure it out.

I'm wondering if WinME is partially like this too.

Whether it's one or more partitions, the wisdom is you can't address one device past 127.5 GiB without some issues (with 98SE).

Anyway, I don't think you'll have many people report such a limitation with ME, since we can't even agree on 98SE. 😀

notsofossil wrote:

Where do newer motherboard chipsets like the Intel 855 fit into that? Remind me, what is the alternative to ACPI? I keep thinking of ACHI...

Isn't a simple answer... All depends how the system was implemented. For example, there where motherboards with a rather simple, but well made ACPI implementation. These ones will work well with Win98/WinME and Win2k even with ACPI enabled. There are modern 855/865 based machines with _OS initialization procedure for legacy OSPM drivers... Win98 and ME will be able to configure these systems even with ACPI enabled and having a post-2001 ACPI table set... Other problem is that many post-2001 ready for XP systems have no way to disable ACPI or the APICs (Win98/ME doesn't like APICs at all).

A starting point would be to say that every PIII and older system will be able to handle Win98SE and ME in a stable way with ACPI disabled and a minimal loss in functionality... Thats because BIOS firmware in these systems has all the fallback legacy functionality, like APM, PCIBIOS enumerators and ISAPnP components, to configure the system without the help of ACPI tables. Also many PIII boards don't include IRQ integrated hardware eaters, like USB2, so you can manage to get the system full working with only 15 IRQs.

After PIII your mileage will vary, and the only way is to test the configuration thoughfully, with 865 based boards being the top... After that, even if you manage to install WinME in a PCIe chipset, the functionality and stability loss can be enough bad to make it worth, even if you manage to disable ACPI, disable APIC and make your system to enable the old style IRQ logic.

kithylin wrote:

This is all off-topic for here.. but no, Win98SE absolutely must have maximum 20GB as the OS drive it's installed to. If you go past that, then "Drivers fail to install" and installed programs randomly crash and the entire system gets quite unstable. Secondary partitions can be anything up to the 2TB FAT32 limit though.

Source: me with way too much time on my hands and installing Win98SE on tons of hard drives to figure it out.

I'm wondering if WinME is partially like this too.

Windows 98SE shouldn't have that problem. Are you sure the hard limit jumper near the IDE connector isn't on? Are you enabling large hard disk support when installing?

I converted my WinMe rig into a 'ghetto' home theater PC back in ~2002:

• Tbird Athlon 700 (OC'd a bit to 750)
• Abit KT7-R
• 192MB RAM
• Maxtor D740X 40GB Ultra ATA/133
• Radeon 8500 LE with TV-out, and
• SB0090 Audigy OEM (the EAX Advanced HD demo was really nice with a surround setup)

I don't remember having performance/stability issues.

This could be the key and worth proving/testing:

hyoenmadan wrote:

Many of the stability problems who users faced comes by ACPI itself. […]
Show full quote

Many of the stability problems who users faced comes by ACPI itself.

Long story says that both Win98 and WinME come with a version of the WDM OSPM driver, ACPI.sys, which was backported from NT to Win9x OS family. Win98 comes with a driver taken from NT5 beta, while WinME one was taken from Win2000 RTM branch. Both have critical bugs, and don't like post 2001 ACPI tables too much... But ironically 98 version (from NT5 Beta) seems less invasive intro the system than ME (from Win2k) version, that's why you don't see the same unstability bug as with WinME. Win 98 uses it to configure the PnP resource tree and a bit more, while ME version goes very deep intro system function, like hardware initialization, in such way the bugs of these older versions of the OSPM driver get amplified.

As side note, you guys can see Win2k RTM, SP1 and SP2 are also unstable when it comes to PCs using ACPI for resource configuration and hardware initialization. Only SP3 fixed ACPI instablilty, in the time that WinXP came and ended with Win2k. Wasn't until WinXP SP1 when machines configured via ACPI became totally stable systems and all the bugs were eliminated. So isn't a problem isolated only to WinME. As proof try to install Win2k RTM in a post 2001 machine with ACPI enabled.You will see how fast it bombs, just like ME.

To overcome this stability problem, install WinME with ACPI support disabled.

archsan wrote:

This could be the key and worth proving/testing:

hyoenmadan wrote:

Many of the stability problems who users faced comes by ACPI itself. […]
Show full quote

Many of the stability problems who users faced comes by ACPI itself.

Long story says that both Win98 and WinME come with a version of the WDM OSPM driver, ACPI.sys, which was backported from NT to Win9x OS family. Win98 comes with a driver taken from NT5 beta, while WinME one was taken from Win2000 RTM branch. Both have critical bugs, and don't like post 2001 ACPI tables too much... But ironically 98 version (from NT5 Beta) seems less invasive intro the system than ME (from Win2k) version, that's why you don't see the same unstability bug as with WinME. Win 98 uses it to configure the PnP resource tree and a bit more, while ME version goes very deep intro system function, like hardware initialization, in such way the bugs of these older versions of the OSPM driver get amplified.

As side note, you guys can see Win2k RTM, SP1 and SP2 are also unstable when it comes to PCs using ACPI for resource configuration and hardware initialization. Only SP3 fixed ACPI instablilty, in the time that WinXP came and ended with Win2k. Wasn't until WinXP SP1 when machines configured via ACPI became totally stable systems and all the bugs were eliminated. So isn't a problem isolated only to WinME. As proof try to install Win2k RTM in a post 2001 machine with ACPI enabled.You will see how fast it bombs, just like ME.

To overcome this stability problem, install WinME with ACPI support disabled.

This could very well be important, as I specifically and recklessly hunted down anything that had to do with sleep mode or hybernation and similar in all my ME builds.

This VMM32.VXD problem is one I hardly ever encountered also and this might be because it's apparently auto-generated at install, but I always try to use as few parts as I can get away with and install the necessary drivers afterwards (including my rule of thumb, plugging in anything (like newer graphics cards and NICs) that Windows ME predates).

It kinda makes sense this way now.

Now that I think about this VMM32.VXD issue and how it is related to drivers at install, would it be possible to get ME running stably on motherboards that are deemed to bluescreen in ME by, prior to running ME setup, disabling as much of the non-intel options in the BIOS as possible?

Might be an interesting test to see if ME will behave on, for instance, certain VIA chipsetted boards if all of the specific VIA stuff is disabled in the BIOS before ME setup is run.

It's just too bad I don't have available workspace available at this time, so I can't try this out myself, but I guess I'll put this on my (huge!!!) pile of to-do things 🤣

The two Pentium M laptops I've used have almost no features or options in the BIOS, they're really quite boring there. They handle Windows ME just fine, just like if one were to use Windows 98SE.

notsofossil wrote:

kithylin wrote:

This is all off-topic for here.. but no, Win98SE absolutely must have maximum 20GB as the OS drive it's installed to. If you go past that, then "Drivers fail to install" and installed programs randomly crash and the entire system gets quite unstable. Secondary partitions can be anything up to the 2TB FAT32 limit though.

Source: me with way too much time on my hands and installing Win98SE on tons of hard drives to figure it out.

I'm wondering if WinME is partially like this too.

Windows 98SE shouldn't have that problem. Are you sure the hard limit jumper near the IDE connector isn't on? Are you enabling large hard disk support when installing?

This "20GB maximum" is untrue in my experience as well. I've been running Win98SE on 80GB, 100GB, and 120GB drives for over a decade without any issues. The 127GB limit is, unfortunately, a real thing.

However, with larger drives I try to keep partition sizes below 60GB. 40GB seems very optimal. Otherwise, defrags and scandisks become painful. Since ME is also based on the same underlying tech as Win98SE, I assume it suffers from these same issues and limitations.

Back in the early 2000s when I ran Win98SE as a contemporary OS, I had an 18GB drive that I thought was luxurious. By those standards, even 40GB is excessive overkill. Of course, nowadays I fill those extra GBs with disc images and rarely use my optical drives anymore.

Yea the limit is indeed around the 127/128/137 mark (depending how you calculate GB) 😀

FDISK and FORMAT are 16 bit programs, so they can't display past 60 something GB, but it's just cosmetic.

I have also experimented a bit with msbatch and Windows ME. The last version was on the 98FE disk, but it works for ME. I'm not sure I should include this in the guide, but it's certainly a nice optional feature and it works pretty well.

After a while I found it easiest to simply boot for a floppy which includes the msbatch answer file as it's easy to make changes to this file, instead of having to burn a new bootable Windows ME CDROM.

Hey Tetrium I just picked up a dreamy machine for ya. 😉 I gotta power this baby up and rescue some files for a friend.

Actually I have no idea what the hardware is yet..... Probably not super thrilling.

swaaye wrote:

Hey Tetrium I just picked up a dreamy machine for ya. 😉 I gotta power this baby up and rescue some files for a friend.

Actually I have no idea what the hardware is yet..... Probably not super thrilling.

That looks similar to one I was gifted some months back. It ended up having a K6-2 550. The motherboard had no cache, onboard SiS AGP, and only PCI and ISA slots. Not terrible, but limited if you want to downclock or use setmul. Curious what yours ends up with inside.

PS--I hate dismantling these cases.

It has an ASUS K7M motherboard. It's a Slot A Athlon 900 Thunderbird. Pretty sweet. Other than the overly engineered case.

swaaye wrote:

It has an ASUS K7M motherboard. It's a Slot A Athlon 900 Thunderbird. Pretty sweet. Other than the overly engineered case.

Wow...how can such beauty come from such an ugly case, but nice find! 😁

Does it have the ME product sticker somewhere on the case btw?

Tetrium wrote:

Wow...how can such beauty come from such an ugly case, but nice find! 😁

Does it have the ME product sticker somewhere on the case btw?

Yeah it has the WinMe license key sticker on the side.

I couldn't get the thing to reliably POST until I completely disassembled it and cleaned all the dust out of the motherboard. Somewhere there was a bad connection. I also don't trust the PSU at this point, and since it's proprietary, the case is history. 😀

swaaye wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Wow...how can such beauty come from such an ugly case, but nice find! 😁

Does it have the ME product sticker somewhere on the case btw?

Yeah it has the WinMe license key sticker on the side.

I couldn't get the thing to reliably POST until I completely disassembled it and cleaned all the dust out of the motherboard. Somewhere there was a bad connection. I also don't trust the PSU at this point, and since it's proprietary, the case is history. 😀

You didn't remove the ME product sticker prior to trashing the case? It's easy with a razor blade, takes maybe a minute or so 😀
Windows product key stickers is another thing I collect ^^ ...but only the ones that would otherwise get thrown out.