Win98SE has WDM support and maintains at least "official" DOS'ish compatibility unlike ME. ME has a better TCP/IP stack and some extra doo-dads, but for gaming it was not any better. It was also notably less stable which were users' biggest complaints.

I didn't have any major problems with it, but I found no reason for it to exist. Win95 (vxd), Win98 (vxd,wdm) and Win2000+ (wdm) are preferrable.

I'd say that calling any form of Win9x "stable" is simply wrong. 😉 There are just too many ways to bring down the OS even if it is fundamentally stable itself. Drivers with too much control and too little stability, crap IRQ sharing support, resource memory, etc....

I think that you are correct in that there isn't really much reason for its existence beyond trying to make 9x look a little more polished until they could get XP out the door. It's nice that WinME has i815 support built-in. That's one less driver install reboot.

The TCP stack update doesn't seem to offer me any benefits because I can run TCPOptimizer on 98SE too and get it moving along at very nice speed. That update sounded like primarily something to make network driver development easier.

I think ME might boot to the desktop faster than 98SE typically does. 98SE waits for various things to start up whereas it seems ME does more backgrounding.

98SE2ME FTW

DosFreak wrote:

98SE2ME FTW

fascinating...........

I do like the better mouse polling ME provides, and the better USB support.

I'm actually dual-booting ME with 2K on two separate HDD's, installed the patches for ME so it supports 1GB of ram.

It runs great on a P4, 3GHz CPU and an ATi 9550 AGP card.

In my experience what really kills Win98 is installing lots of different versions of Direct X. Install the latest supported by the OS and then never allow an installer to add a different version. This so far has worked for me and I haven't had any problems with backwards compatibility yet...

Is there any real reason to run Win 95/98/ ME instead of 2000/XP for gaming? Some of the few scenarios where I've found 95 or 98 to be needed are playing Dungeon Keeper in Direct X mode (win 95 works straight off) and Star Wars Pod Racer (easiest to get working with win 95/98 and less buggy than 2000/ xp).

I'm asking this seriously, cause nearly everytime I install 95/98 on my retro machines I end up reinstalling 2000 or XP due to the various issues as described above. This has caused me many days of my life and many facepalms 😠 . Yet the lure of running an anachronistic o/s is strangely compelling.

swaaye wrote:

DosFreak wrote:

98SE2ME FTW

fascinating...........

What I think DosFreak is saying, is about the modification of WIN 98 and ME, a guy made who put out here to all of us to enjoy, and I am talking about a link that I can NOT seem to find. But anyway that is one awesome mixture of the two systems.

sgt76 wrote:

Is there any real reason to run Win 95/98/ ME instead of 2000/XP for gaming?

More then half pre-2001 PC games are not compatible with Xp or later.
Sources of this are:
- protections (early safedisk and laserlock).
- old DX or OGL used (Arabian Nights as example).
- new WinAPI in Xp (The Hive etc)
- no MCI in Xp. And codec incomparability. (Escape player from Eidos as excellent example for this).
- many, many more...

Yes, sometimes there are Xp patches. But - only with Me/98SE you have almost any old windows game working.

P.S. I have Me as dualboot OS with Xp on my "test PC for old games". Reasons - USB support and DX9.0c support. Two "must have" tweaks are - "use only 512 Mb RAM" in msconfig (kills memory bug) and HT disabled in BIOS. ASUS p4p800 se, P4 3 GHz, ATi X850 PE AGP.

valnar: ME has WDM support, and is more robust and stable than that of 98SE.

valnar wrote:

It was also notably less stable

People seem to say this frequently about ME and I've always found it very vague. If it's "less stable" there ought to be a good reason for it. As has been stated, the System Restore stuff was kind of problematic.

BigBodZod wrote:

installed the patches for ME so it supports 1GB of ram.

Er, what?

WolverineDK wrote:

What I think DosFreak is saying, is about the modification of WIN 98 and ME, a guy made who put out here to all of us to enjoy, and I am talking about a link that I can NOT seem to find.

Like just about everything else, it can be found via http://www.mdgx.com . (There's also a Win98 "native" USB driver equivalent to that in ME.)

Gamecollector wrote:

More then half pre-2001 PC games are not compatible with Xp or later.

There are many incompatible games, but I declare that you're pulling that "more than half" figure out of nowhere - unless you're including the entire history of DOS games.

unmei220 wrote:

valnar: ME has WDM support

As has been stated, so does 98 SE.

I like Windows ME. It certainly has it's disadvantages but so does 98SE. For one, ME has more in-build drivers (including SB Live!), in-build support for ZIP files, USB mass storage (yes, I'm still naming it 😉 )so easier to move drivers from a USB stick onto it so I can finish the build (with 98SE I'll need to install some universal USB driver first, more work).
I can also remember that ME lost many of the annoyances and bugs that 98SE and before had. It's been a couple years since I last used 98SE but I remember clearly finding 98SE annoying to use (and it's more ugly too 🤣, looks just like Windows 95).
ME does require some tweaking (disabling PC Health, amongst a few other things) but 98SE often includes having to install more drivers which imo evens that out.

Support for games is a bit different though. Theres games that work on 98SE and not on ME and vice versa. Same goes for some versions of some particular programs.

One thing I do not like about ME is it's tendancy to sort pictograms in rows wider then the size of the window, so I'll either need to maximize the current window or need to scroll a lot (bleh).
Also when pasting a large number of files somewhere, it tends to sort them in a large single row from the top left to the bottom right (iirc overlapping eachother), another annoying thing about ME.

I do remember liking the configuration menu thingy more then that of 98SE.

There was once a patch for ME made (the unofficial service pack). There were 2 versions for it (SP1 and SP2) though I've never gotten hold of SP2 because of a broken link. There isn't a Dutch version of that SP though but it fixes some known bugs of ME along with a couple standard tweaks.

Also ME boots up REALLY FAST compared to any other version of Windows and shuts down fast too, which I find a nice extra 😀.

DOS games usually worked fine on ME, though I reckon it's more a software thing, making it less useful for hardcore DOS users.

ME also supports more internal memory then 98SE, but this only is of importance when using over a gig or so.

Tetrium wrote:

For one, ME has more in-build drivers (including SB Live!)

But what's the point to in-built drivers when there's almost always something more up-to-date available from the manufacturer?

in-build support for ZIP files

It's a nice extra, but a poor substitute for a proper standalone archiver. (I wish I could kill the built-in Zip support in XP; I've tried a few times but I still end up with Zip folders in the Tree pane.)

I actually had ME on my p2/400~p3/500 era pc's... I liked it more than 98SE (after disabling system restore completely , search for "system restore remover pro") and never had any issues with them... no strange crashes or troubles with software.... I would have used them in my current win9x retro-gaming machine but I see that for win98SE nowdays exist numerous upgrade packages and hotfixes... so it was a choise of an OS better "supported" for me

unmei220 wrote:

valnar: ME has WDM support, and is more robust and stable than that of 98SE.

No kidding. Apparently you missed my point.

ME is not required above 98 for any drivers because both have WDM support.

I think it goes like this.

DOS and 9x games?
98 SE.

Only 9x games?
98 SE or ME.

9x and DOS games, and a slow CPU like 486/Pentium?
95 B/C.

Of course you can build your own hybrid combination OS with one of the many tweak packs out there too if you want to spend the time on that.

Tetrium wrote:

(and it's more ugly too 🤣, looks just like Windows 95).

Nah it has some visual tweaks above 95. It's in between ME and 95, but if you install that unofficial 98SE service pack it looks pretty much like Win2k.

swaaye wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

(and it's more ugly too 🤣, looks just like Windows 95).

Nah it has some visual tweaks above 95. It's in between ME and 95, but if you install that unofficial 98SE service pack it looks pretty much like Win2k.

Very true 😉

You can basically tweak 98SE to be more like ME and ME to be more like 98SE in so much, there'll be very little difference left.

Also your list of OS's is very similar to mine:
I'll use ME for 9x games, 98SE for when I also want better DOS compatibility and 95B/C for 486's (or perhaps very slow Pentiums)

I don't bother with 98FE. It was my 1st Windows and when I went to (an untweaked) ME, it became a lot more stable.

And if an OS has a build-in driver (like ME has for the SB Live!) I don't even bother to put in a newer version of that driver, provided the standard one works. Also often 'upgraded' drivers tend to come with more junk then the spartanic standard ones and I like to not clutter-up my systems with extra stuff if I don't have to.

one other thing, another advantage of ME over 98SE is it works with harddrives larger then 137GB out of the box and it's defrag and checkdisk are superior to the ones used in 98SE. That's all stuff you won't need to tweak in ME.

Edit:And yes I know...I am a ME fanboy 😜

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...)