Win ME/9x is the last windows to support Win 3.xx games.

I just confirmed that winME do need the 48bit LBA patch like win98 for HDD's that are >137GB. Beware!

keropi wrote:

wait a sec there.... is it 101% certain that drives larger than 137GB just work in ME? Tetrium, do you have such a drive and filled it past 137GB and it works fine? (I ask because 98SE also worked fine until you get past the 137GB limit... and yes, I lost files, that's why I ask...)

No I don't. I typically use 9x only for older systems (with like 20GB harddrives or smaller) but I read it on MSFN.org.
It has a GREAT amount of info about how to tweak Windows and is especially interesting as I don't know of any other location on the web where more has been done to make 9x more 'modern' then by the community over there!

Personally I use XP for 'database' stuff. I do have a 2.88 floppydrive in that XP system though so I can put larger floppy images onto it from my XP machine directly (using winimage) but personally I have no reason to use such a large harddrive for 9x...but that's just me 😉

yeah, I asked on MSFN and dencorso (a mod there) said winME needed the patch too... so be carefull anyone out there 😁

keropi wrote:

yeah, I asked on MSFN and dencorso (a mod there) said winME needed the patch too... so be carefull anyone out there 😁

Woops, my mistake then! I was under the impression ME could handle it. Cheers for doing the research, I learned a new thing today hehe 😉

yeah, I had to learn the hard way 🤣 ...
I am gonna give winME a chance tomorrow, replacing win98SE... they seem more suitable for a windows-only environment...

keropi wrote:

yeah, I had to learn the hard way 🤣 ...
I am gonna give winME a chance tomorrow, replacing win98SE... they seem more suitable for a windows-only environment...

I'd suggest you do a little research about what tweaks you should perform as it's tweaking is TOTALLY different from tweaking 98SE.
I'd recommend you do a google search as there seem to be a lot of pages about it.
I would recommend to disable pc-health (the system restore) and the file protection thingy. Also do the cache/memory tweaks and either completely remove IE or install IE6 sp1.

Edit: Oh, forgot about one other advantage of ME...though it's of no importance really...you can install ME without needing to type in the...you know what 😉

LOOOL
I actually remember ME a lot better than 98SE... gonna use "system restore remover pro" to completelly remove restore+flie_protection, the 48bit patch, IE6.1 and that unofficial SP1 that MDGX has in his site... (seriously that site is a holy bible for older OS'es!)

keropi wrote:

yeah, I had to learn the hard way 🤣 ...
I am gonna give winME a chance tomorrow, replacing win98SE... they seem more suitable for a windows-only environment...

What about doing the WIN98ME mod instead ? cause then you will have DOS, and the good stuff from ME in a nice package ?

I just finished installing ME WolverineDK 😁
After removing pchealth/system-restore/file-protection and applying SP1 (and 48bitLBA patch!) I can say that on my TUSL-2 pc , winME behaves better than pimped 98SE... DOS is not my goal for this machine (I have a pentium200mmx dos-only machine) and if it was, the free dos-patch is out there 😁

keropi: cool beans 😀

keropi wrote:

and if it was, the free dos-patch is out there 😁

I never got that to work. Always just dumps me to dos instead on bootup instead of just fixing up the F8 menu.

I clearly remember the patch working back then, since I was using it... but god knows that patches are available nowdays... (also I don't remember what it was called 🙁 )

Toastytech got Win95 running on a 500 GB hard drive using an update intended for Win98, apparently:
http://toastytech.com/guis/miscb2.html

keropi wrote:

I can say that on my TUSL-2 pc , winME behaves better than pimped 98SE...

Bit premature to be making sweeping statements like that, no? Maybe your 98SE installation just didn't like all that "pimping".

keropi wrote:

gonna use "system restore remover pro" to completelly remove restore+flie_protection, the 48bit patch, IE6.1 and that unofficial SP1 that MDGX has in his site...

Gee, I thought you needed to pay for 98lite to remove IE.

Also, please don't call it IE 6.1; that only causes confusion.

Jorpho wrote:

Bit premature to be making sweeping statements like that, no? Maybe your 98SE installation just didn't like all that "pimping".

no it is not. the damn thing works better , if you read carefully you will notice that I state it works better for my hardware.
Also the "pimping" was just the unofficial service packs in case you are curious about it. Without them a win98SE installation is pretty much crap if you use some "modern" hardware and not 440BX and the likes...

Jorpho wrote:

Gee, I thought you needed to pay for 98lite to remove IE.

no, the "remove" part ends at file protection...

Jorpho wrote:

Also, please don't call it IE 6.1; that only causes confusion.

IE6 SP1 , happy now?

keropi wrote:

no it is not. the damn thing works better , if you read carefully you will notice that I state it works better for my hardware.
Also the "pimping" was just the unofficial service packs in case you are curious about it. Without them a win98SE installation is pretty much crap if you use some "modern" hardware and not 440BX and the likes...

Didn't we establish already that with its WDM support, 98 SE has practically the same hardware support as ME? Just because certain drivers are included on the ME installation CD doesn't magically make them better, does it? Besides, all Intel offers for the 815e chipset is an "INF update utility" and the Application Accelerator for the IDE controller.

I have run 98 SE on a TUSL-2 and it was hardly crap at all.

Jorpho wrote:

keropi wrote:

no it is not. the damn thing works better , if you read carefully you will notice that I state it works better for my hardware.
Also the "pimping" was just the unofficial service packs in case you are curious about it. Without them a win98SE installation is pretty much crap if you use some "modern" hardware and not 440BX and the likes...

Didn't we establish already that with its WDM support, 98 SE has practically the same hardware support as ME? Just because certain drivers are included on the ME installation CD doesn't magically make them better, does it? Besides, all Intel offers for the 815e chipset is an "INF update utility" and the Application Accelerator for the IDE controller.

I have run 98 SE on a TUSL-2 and it was hardly crap at all.

who established anything and when? 🤣 you are funny
did it ever occur to you that:
a. I would not bother posting crap
b. your posts and "established facts" can be as crap as my posts

So there you have it. good for you win98 worked fine on your setup, but on mine it did not. Why try to enforce your "opinion" on others is beyond my understanding. Geez.... 😖

I beg your pardon, but yes, I'm generally quite skeptical when someone says "I did this thing to my computer just now and now it works better" without giving time to see if it really does work better over the long term and after a period of typical use. I've made the same mistake myself on numerous occasions.

Are you saying ME's hardware support does differ significantly from 98SE's hardware support in ways that cannot be remedied with additional driver downloads? (I'm still wondering about that "1 GB" patch someone mentioned earlier.)

OK maybe I was not clear enough... I had win98SE installed some months. Slowly filling my HDD until the filesystem was destroyed. During that time I was plagued with several strange annoyances: the computer almost never shutdown and I had to power it off manually, the SB Live! driver was a bitch to install, having a USB2 card made the system a total crash fest (and I removed it...) and every change on the system's hardware always lead to some probs. But I thought: OK, it was the HDD size limit that did all that... So I applied all nescessary patches and installed win98SE again. STILL almost the same probs existed except the shutdown crash. Not to mention the fact that if the pc went to sleep it stayed there forever. Drivers etc where all installed and stable versions to my knowledge.
So I decided to read a little more on the winME / win9x situation:

ME has capabilities not found elsewhere in win 9x : […]
Show full quote

ME has capabilities not found elsewhere in win 9x :

full ACPI aware: improving cold boot time, pre and post-logon boot times and time required for resuming from hibernation, OS-controlled ACPI S4 sleep state and other power management features without manufacturer-supplied drivers

WDM Driver modell throughout the OS, less use of VXDs for more stability. Needed for ACPI to work its magic.

Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) instead of TWAIN , still used in XP, support for PICT-Cameras and Scanners ( lots modern devices use this protocol ).

Universal Plug and Play ( UpNp) , detects devices on the network automatically.

Built in Windows 2000 TCP/IP and NDIS networking stack and architecture, more reliable, full-featured, stable and offered better performance over the 98SE stack .

Support for networking over FireWire, IrDA, ( Bluetooth capable with 3rd party drivers like Toshibas famous stack ) a network diagnostic troubleshooter, outstanding Home Networking Wizard which let people share folders,printers or set up a connection-sharing with offline-machines.

native USB support for Mass-storage Devices and external CD/DVD devices, better USB-printer support.

native Firewire support, for DV-Camcorders and the like (think of the Moviemaker application )

far better memory handling than 98SE, especially if more than 256MB Ram is present. Depending on mainboard you wont have to workaround the 512MB - "bug", I have seen PCs with 1GB and ME without any tweak running stable.

As you can see WDM support is implemented nativelly and not as an add-on patch working alongside the older VxD driver system and ACPI is fully natively working.
After double-checking the 137GB HDD limit I gave them a shot. And stuff just started magically to work. No SBLive misbehavior, the system boots in 1/10th of the time when a lan cable is not connected, usb2 works fine with all hardware and I did not get random qwirks I was getting with 98SE and their ~300MB of update patches...

Day #1 win98se: various problems
Day #1 winME: just works

So yeah , for me after 1 day of testing I can say that winME works better for my setup.

You left out things that make 98SE better under certain circumstances though, like games. DOS support is *huge* and in some cases, VXD support is necessary for certain drivers, especially certain wavetable enabled sound cards. While technically all correct points, your list treats ME like it would be the best choice for a general operating system - but only in comparison to 98. While that may have been true during its' time, nowadays XP would be a much better choice for general use and 98SE is still better for classic games. Using ME to replace 98 might make sense if those are your only OS choices, but they aren't. 2000/XP makes better sense *over* ME, while ME has less compatibility with older DOS games and even certain Win95 games or hardware.

In other words, in a world with 95,98,ME,2000,XP,Win7 - ME is still in limbo and a bastard child. It's a jack of all trades and master of none. Give me XP for general use and 98 for my older games. I have no use for ME.

(Notice how I left off Vista? Same thing. People called it the ME of its' time. Well, it is. For many applications, XP is far more compatible. For something modern, Win7 is better. Vista is in the same boat as ME)