sliderider wrote:

alexanrs wrote:

I hardly believe a Windows 98 install upgraded to ME would have anything worthwhile

Then you know NOTHING. 98SE2ME incorporates all of the new technologies in ME into a 98SE install. The reason for it is that somewhere along the line Microsoft broke parts of DOS compatibility in ME, whether accidentally or on purpose, and ME was buggy as hell. 98SE2ME allows you to "upgrade" to ME without losing any DOS compatibility. It is a superior build to straight ME.

You misunderstood me. I meant that I don't believe upgrading a Windows 98SE installation to a fully fledged install of Windows ME (not 98SE2ME) would have any advantages compared to a clean install of ME.

sliderider wrote:

Then you know NOTHING.

I believe the correct quote is "You know nothing Jon Snow".

Robin4 wrote:

Can anybody say which choice is better: […]
Show full quote

Can anybody say which choice is better:

Full copy of windows ME or
An upgrade from windows 98se?

Because i think that a full installation would all of his own drivers (and maybe included most problems too)
When upgraded, maybe some windows 98 se parts will be the same..

May be it's just me, but I always do a pure install after format in order to avoid running into some errors or compatibility issues later on.

Eep. I posted a falsehood in regards to the specs of the machine I'm using Me on right now.

Latitude C600
Pentium III 1GHz/700MHz (primitive SpeedStep implementation is primitive, but also somewhat useful in keeping temps and power consumption down...)
128MB PC100 SDR (soon to be 512MB)
ESS Maestro 3 audio (No FM synth! Argh! Also, will probably have to fiddle to get sound and midi in DOS games again...)
40GB HDD (there goes my grandiose plan of dual or triple booting this thing, the 80GB drive I tried locked up the machine during detection...)
Rage Mobility 128 M3 with 8MB VRAM (1400x1050 max on internal panel, but I need to replace the panel as it has some annoying lines through it... good thing I have a parts machine handy)

I will be using a PCMCIA wireless-g card as well, I just have to find one at some point.

WinMe is remarkably solid. I haven't had it crash once, in about 10 hours of heavy use. Far from the terrible experience that it was hyped up to be. I concur with whoever it was that said that it's fine as long as you have all WDM drivers.

I liked the higher mouse sampling, the Open With, and the "Where's my programs?" (which people misblamed Me for as Win2000 introduced this feature). I hated the immediate "gotta hide this!" shutdown after a General Protection Error, the delayed scandisk, and the automatic eating of autoexec.bat/config.sys which made installing support TSRs for DOS PCI sound more difficult (and that's just for the context of running them within Windows).

some advantages I have found with ME are faster boot times than 98, the networking seems better & on the 3 systems I have installed it on so far it has had all the drivers(2 super 7 machines & PIII laptop). Stability has also been perfect.

leileilol wrote:

I liked the higher mouse sampling, the Open With, and the "Where's my programs?" (which people misblamed Me for as Win2000 introduced this feature). I hated the immediate "gotta hide this!" shutdown after a General Protection Error, the delayed scandisk, and the automatic eating of autoexec.bat/config.sys which made installing support TSRs for DOS PCI sound more difficult (and that's just for the context of running them within Windows).

What was the deal with the Windows Scandisk that would go faster if you moved the mouse around? Is that also on 98? I can't remember exactly.

So I installed a patch that lets me use real mode DOS, but on each successfull bootup ME still eats the config.sys and autoexec.bat files, making me have to add the ifshlp.sys line to config.sys and reboot every time I boot up. Is there any way to keep it from doing that? Making the files read only doesn't help, it just makes me have to remove the read only attribute every time I have to edit it.

Sedrosken wrote:

I understand it was met with scorn and still is by most people, but why am I seeing so many people using it for their P3 boxes? Not as many as people using 98SE or 2000, of course, but it's still a sizable amount of people. Is there something they know about it that I don't? Have they figured out how to stabilize it?

I should still have a folder with all the stuff I usually installed on all my ME machines somewhere.
It includes a text file with all the tweaks I did, which made ME run faster and more stable (I remember disabling PC-Health? The backup thingy, as I never used it anyway) and a bunch of other tweaks.
I put it on a ZIP disk and after install would plug in a USB ZIP drive (or USB flash disk if I felt less 'retro' 😜 ) and copy the whole directory over.
The directory also incuded stuff like DX and a bunch of more common drivers and a few must-use programs.

mmx_91 wrote:

In my case, I use Windows ME instead of 98SE just because of its much much better USB support. I have my old computer connected to my TV set, using my Logitech modern keyboard and mouse. When I first tried to install Windows 98 in this PC, I had many problems with these devices, needing to find a ps/2 keyboard just to install HID drivers.

The same case for USB pendrives. The system asked me for drivers for each separate device, so I needed to tell the computer where the drivers where, and after that, insert the Win98 CD I still don't know why, just to copy some 'needed files' again and again, which is reeeeeally annoying.

In Windows ME, however, all these issues are solved out-of-the-box, as everything you try to connect that is 'standard' works as usual like on a new pc 🤣

I first started using ME as I wasn't able to find a 98SE install disk anywhere (everyone wanted to get rid of ME at the time and 98SE was still very popular back then) and tried to make the best of it...and I was pleasantly surprised!
Some years later I finally managed to get 98SE and gave that a try and ran into all the problems you just listed.

BSA Starfire wrote:

some advantages I have found with ME are faster boot times than 98, the networking seems better & on the 3 systems I have installed it on so far it has had all the drivers(2 super 7 machines & PIII laptop). Stability has also been perfect.

I noticed the same. I don't remember exact numbers, but I think I used ME on at least 10 different machines (these are machines that gotten at least a reasonable amount of use).
The main advantages imo I see for 98SE is it's better support for (native) DOS and it's somewhat lower system requirements

Sedrosken wrote:

So I installed a patch that lets me use real mode DOS

This patch?
Strange because it worked ok for me. And my ME version isn't US, it's localized. Config.sys and Autoexec.bat worked as intended.
Maybe you not patched REGENV32.EXE?
Still even the patched WinME works not so good in DOS mode. Grabs too much memory and himem.sys isn't configurable. So - I prefer Win98SE Emergency Boot floppy. Insert, reboot, work in DOS 7.1.