Has any one had problems with the SBLive! Ware version3 and Windows ME???
Everything runs great untill I try to install the drivers for my SBLive!. As soon as I install the drivers and it reboots Windows finds new hardware (16bit emulation) then instantly I get the blue screen of death, over and over again untill I have to just turn the computer off and start in safe mode. Any ideas on how I can remedy this???

sounds like it may be an irq conflict. In safe mode try going to: control panel/system/device manager/creative miscellaneous devices. click on 'Creative SB16 Emulation' then 'properties', 'settings, and put a tick in 'Allow LPT interupt sharing'.Keep clicking ok until you are prompted to reboot and hopefully it will all work fine.

i am running WinME 4.90.3000, but i see posts and such refering to 3000.2 and 3000.3 what is the official build number of the final release and if i am not running it then what release am i running?

I installed it yesterday, installation went smoothly, millenium runs no faster than win98, it has not crashes on me yet, windows media player 7 runs faster than on win98 i think - upgrading is not essential, dont upgarde unless you have to, but when you do decide to format your comp or whatever, pop winMe on for the hell of it, good OS, appears stable so far too

If it did do "gold" how come when you go to Windows Update it still has Millennium posted as a beta when it went to RTM... Anyone got an answer..?

Because you moron they probably didn't even Update the Windows Update Page.. DID YOU EVER THINK OF THAT YOU WAREZ FREAK??

maby it is gold but gold is the final version before beta!! maby this 1 expires thats why i have the crack handy i am using 4.90.3000 and i tthink that this is still a bit buggy and scince it dont come out till september i think maby this might be a final?? but on the 3.91XXXXXX somthin beta it said upgrade to the final copy immeaditely so this may and may not be!!!!!

Well I downloaded the final code (3000.2). It works fine, but it seems like another Windows 95 service pack. When Microsoft released Windows 95 it was a sigificant improvement over Windows 3.11. Then came Windows 98 and it seems a bit fatter, but basically the same. Yes it did have a few more features, but none were dynamic enough to charge $150. Then comes 98SE....I'll just leave that one alone. Now Windows Me is here and it seems Microsoft has a nice trend going. I hope as the months go by Windows Me will live up to the hype. After all it's the latest version of Windows 95.

If you are a gamer, grab Windows Me. It's based on the somewhat aged 9x Kernal and it's the OS Microsoft will be pushing down your throats so there should be. You might not want to install version 7 of the media player(download 6.4), but other than that you should be safe. If gaming isn't your main priority do yourself a favor and grab Windows 2000 Pro. It's my operating system of choice. :)

i am using 4.90.3000 is that 3000.2 ??? or is that better cause i have gold so what is that 3000.2??

On this so called final version, located here:
http://cryptdwellerz.cjb.net/

Did they finally take out the survey buttons?!

I have installed several builds of Me, including the final just lastnight and it hasn't gotten anymore stable that i can see. It crashes constantly mainly when using Medial Player 7. Almost immediately using this, i forced to reboot because of any random crashes. After installing the final build, i would say within 15 min, it crashed twice!! I don't know why they would ship a beta product with a final version of the OS. I think Win98 is perfectly fine and completely stable, along with Win200, which is not too friendly with pre directx 7 games, but will run virtually anything that has come out since Win2k. This is my two cents. Don't even bother with WinMe!!!

I've had goodluck using MS media player 7 with Win98 se, yet to try it with Win ME though. As for your statement about Win98 being stable, your out of your mind and I have some swamp land for sale if your interested! I also find IE 5.5 slightly unstable, but rarely.

Here is a WINDOWS ME FINAL DL site

http://cryptdwellerz.cjb.net/

it takes about 20 minutes on Cable to dl the 32 files

I wish i had read about the OEM part before uninstalling and trying to install again my stupidity

My point is clear...

If that's what you want, forget Windows 9x/Me and go with Windows 2000. :) I think it's without question the most stable and robust OS that MS has ever produced.

yep. windows 2000 is the answer.
i had a computer in california a while ago. it ran for 8 months on a RC version of windows 2000 professional.
8 months without restarting. of course no one used it. it was used as a web server for my mp3 site.
the site no longer exists because i had to move and in my new are they have no mediaone cable nor other cable company that would offer hi speed internet.
my friend also had a windows NT workstation 4.0 with SP3 on it.
he ran the computer as a web server for about 2 years then his HDD gave up. it shouldn;t have but it did. but the OS was stable for such a long time. hack. i can;t run windows 98 for 2 weeks without rebooting.
get win2k man.

nova897@hotmail.com

Is the ME gold version available on any sites ?

try ftp://ftp.warez.org/WinME/

Yes, it's definitely out there all over the place. Half the fun of is finding a site that has it, so I won't spoil it. :) About to install my copy now...

well if u wont give a site out (too bad cause im trying to find one) then at least tell us how the install went, good warez copy of it or what?

Yeah, no problems with the install. It's the OEM version so it will only let you clean install, and not upgrade over Win98 (for obvious reasons since its OEM). There's no noticable differences however from RC2 with this build (3000.2). A good place to discuss WinMe is on #oldmemphis on the Undernet server. Lots of great information there (install procedures, boot time, stability, and all the other stuff we talk about on this forum! :)), and occasionally, people will post their FTP sites there as well. There have, however, been some people passing off RC2 at the RTM build (why I don't know), so you have to be on the lookout for that, and ask the person if they verified the build. It's all over the place though. :)

thanks, what is the exact undernet server domain i connect to?

Any of them work. Just open up mIRC and it has a big list of a bunch of servers. Just choose any of the ones prefixed with "Undernet" until you find one that works (some are full, some are down, some work.)

Is the ME gold version available on any sites ?

YOU HAVE NO LIFE JR THATS WHY YOU KILLED TIME YOU f**!!!

I had a couple of hours to kill, so I figured I'd try doing clean installs of Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98 SE, and Windows Me, on the same system and using a stopwatch, time how long they take to boot. Here are my findings.

Time from "Starting xxx" screen to taskbar showing up:
Windows 95: 8.75
Windows 98: 15.55
Windows Me: 16.78

Time from "Starting xxx" screen till the hard drive stops grinding:
Windows 95: 9.23
Windows 98: 18.70
Windows Me: 24.58

System configuration:
ABIT BP6 motherboard
Celeron @ 488MHz
Samsung 8.4GB hard drive (completely reformatted before installing each OS)
256MB RAM
3Com NIC, SB Live, however both of these devices were disabled in each Windows, so that their initialization time would not skew the results.

Each Windows install was a "Typical" install. Each test was performed several times, and the numbers averaged.

Anyway, this is the _second_ system of mine that confirms that a clean install of Windows Me indeed takes longer to boot than a clean install of Windows 98. (The first one I tested in my previous posting was SCSI-based, had an arguably inferior VIA chipset as opposed to Intel, and ran at 375MHz; those factors likely explain the 20-second difference in Me boot time on this machine.)

I notice many of you continue to say "Windows Me boots in xx seconds, that's faster", but such a statement proves NOTHING unless you compare those xx seconds against an IDENTICALLY configured Windows 98 installation. I encourage anyone who disagrees with my conclusions, or thinks something's "wrong" with my two systems, to actually perform the exact same test on their own system instead of idiotically claiming I'm "full of sh*t". I bet you'll be surprised at what you find.

If you have the time, try the same again only this time using customized installs and choosing the same options on all three OS's if possible. I am not sure that it will make a difference but it would be interesting to see. It would also be nice if you could include NT4 and 2000. I know that they will be significantly slower but how much is the question.

bull s***. i've been building computers for 5 years and i never read a lie bigger than this one.
how can u say Win9x boots faster than WinME?
i have a AMD K6/2 - 550 MHz with 128 RAM and a 6.4 GB 7200 rpm HD.
custom install of win95, win98 and winme. winme definately boots faster.
and give me a favor. throw that celeron out the window.
my AMD 350 MHz is MUCH faster than your crappy celeron.
u can piss on it.

nova897@hotmail.com

First, once again, personal opinion on this matter are irrelevant. You can tell me my figures are "bull s***" and "lies", but I don't see you actually performing a similar test on your system.

Second, A 488MHz Celeron far outpaces a K6 350 and even a Pentium II 450 somewhat. Read up on your benchmarks before making such a stupid remark.

It would be a pain to do all that over again, but I might try that, so this issue can finally be settled. :)

What a bunch of BS.

Win95 never booted up that fast on my system, nor did Windows98(or 98 SE). Both of them took over 30secs (which is what MS says that they are capable of).

Yeah yeah Whatever...

Do your research before you post a comment dude..

Sorry, but those figures were the god-honest truth. Remember in another forum, pluralsingularity claimed he installed Windows 95 on a system and it booted in about 6 seconds, and we both thought he was crazy. :) But now I now it is in fact possible.

Remember, I disabled the network card and sound cards, so it was essentially a "bare" system. Those two things can account for a lot of the boot time.

Oh, so we have two idiots here? Check out this benchmark:

http://www.tomshardware....q1/990223/index-04.html

As you can clearly see, both the Pentium II 400 and the Celeron 400 trounce the K6-2 400. (nova897 said he had a K6-2, so the K6-2 is what I'm looking at.)

When I was running Windows 98 SE, I had so many DOS drivers loading. McAfee VirusScan, Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! 16-bit DOS emulation, etc. Windows Me has versions of ALL DOS drivers as windows drivers and therefore, gets you into Windows faster but may take a little longer to load everything once you're in. But who cares? Once you're in Windows and the harddrive keeps grinding, you can still at least USE it with little performace loss or wait for all the drivers to load (in DOS) and THEN use Windows. So overall, yes you DO gain boot-up speed.

You can achieve the exact same DOS-less effect in Windows 98 by clearing out your config.sys and autoexec.bat files.

And Windows Me does not "move" any drivers to Windows. The drivers you had in your config.sys and autoexec.bat were never even used by Windows in the first place; Windows has its own native protected-mode sound card drivers, etc. They were used only when you went into MS-DOS mode, which of course is now gone.

Dude, you listed your processor speeds differently. First as 550mhz, and second as 350. Either you are referring to two different systems or you are a complete moron.

By the way, pissing on a celeron would only reduce it's speed. It is, however, more piss resistant than your K6/2

Oh yeah? Then how come in Windows Me it says 16-bit Emulation in the Drivers section and in Windows 98 SE it doesn't? And the drivers only come with DOS versions of the 16-bit emulator.

Well, OK, that may be something specific to your sound card. Mine doesn't have the "16-bit Emulation".

But as far as driver initialization goes, devices are not initializing while you're busy starting applications. Applications, like programs in your Startup group do, but devices are initialized sequentially at boot time before it even starts up Explorer. (If it actually delayed device initialization till sometime after starting Explorer, then some of your apps wouldn't work if they were started right away.) Thus, there is no inherent speed advantage in a driver being a Windows driver as opposed to a DOS driver.

i am talking about 2 different systems.
and yes. my 550 is faster than a 550 celeron (donno if it exists and i don;t care if it does)
my point is final. intel = crap.
amd rules.
where's pentium with a 1000 MHz processor? HUH?
amd did it. amd was always a few MHz ahead of any intel product.
i am only talking about intel and amd. if any other idiot wants to comment about some other company (motorola) had the 1000 MHz some time like 6 years ago. i don;t care. i talk about AMD and intel only.

Um. The 1GHz P3 has been out for a long time. And interestingly, it's significantly faster than the 1GHz Athlon, because the Athlon's L2 cache doesn't run at full core speed like the P3.

And again, no, a K6-2 does not outperform a Celeron at the same clock speed. It's time to quit fooling yourself. Refer to the benchmark link I posted above (or any other site's benchmarks). And while you're there, check out the "High-end" benchmark, where a Celeron 400 handily beats even a K6-3 400 -- by over 12%.

Intel's 1GHz outperforms the original Athlon at 1GHz. I don't know about the Thunderbird but some benchmarks I've seen seem to suggest that the motherboard's chipset can also make a difference. Some benchmarks could give Thunderbird the lead while others might give Pentium III the lead. It might end up coming down to the chipset on the motherboard. I somehow doubt that a K6-2 outperforms a Celeron. I have a K6-2 500 and I don't think it could beat a Celeron 500.

Might it be "Creative SB16 Emulation"? If so, that's SB Live!'s Sound Blaster 16 Emulator. Sound Blaster 16 is an older sound card and I think that driver emulates the SB16 for DOS apps running in Windows. The driver however is not 16-bit AFAIK.

A K6-2 outperforms a Pentium (P5) at the same clock speed (in integer operations only, however), but NOT a Pentium II/III or a Celeron (with on-chip cache) at the same clock speed. I guess that's probably where the misunderstanding lies.

Dudes. AMD may make some fairly good chips, but one this is for sure: their motherboards stink. Screw clock speed, I go for stability. And when it comes down to that, Intel is the only choice.

And if you want to talk about AMD vs. an Intel Celeron, K6/2 is not a good comparison. Listen, if you really want to argue the point (give it up already), talk abou the Duron dude. It's the only competition for the Celeron that AMD has put out (the Athlon is in the PIII competitive line). And, yes, it may be better than the Celeron. So if you stop being a complete moron, you'd try to use the Duron as an argument, not your stupid K6/2.

You're right there. When Athlons first came out, I was actually considering purchasing one, until I heard about the AGP 2X problem in the early AMD 750 chipsets...

Benchmarks show that the Duron kicks the crap out of the Celeron and actually gets kind of close to the original Athlon and the Pentium III.

Chipsets make a difference :)

I spent some time today installing and playing around with the latest beta of Me (the one before the gold). I was somewhat impressed when I had heard claims about Me's boot time in the past. But in my tests on a PII-375, it actually took longer to boot than 98 did -- a whopping 35+ seconds from "Starting Windows" to the desktop, or 45+ seconds if I wait until the hard drive light goes off completely. (And that's after a clean install -- no apps or anything.)

I get the feeling that these claims of faster boot time are nothing more than a myth. After all, when Windows 98 was in beta, I distinctly remember a very large percentage of the beta testers saying how much faster it seemed to boot. And two years later, what do you hear them saying? They say how they miss how fast Windows 95 used to boot.

I think those that claim Windows Me boots many times faster than Windows 98 must be comparing a app-laden install of 98 to a clean install of Me.

Personally I could care less how fast 98 or Me boots since I run 2000 primarily, but it would be nice if people got their facts straight.

(Just my $0.02.)

Faster boot isn't a myth. WinME doesn't read the config.sys and autoexec.bat files, hence the theoretical faster boot. For me personally, there was no difference in boot up speed because I didn't have much in those files to begin with. But I do know others that did have some improvement... but only a couple seconds at most.

That's really weird man. I have WinMe and Win98. WinMe absolutely blows away Win98 in boot-up time. It's not even close. I'm not sure why/how you're getting those results, but I guess everyone's mileage will vary depending on system configs and such.

Reading autoexec.bat and config.sys take what, 1/100 of a second? That can't be it...

But anyway, I didn't mean to imply that Windows Me was in general slower than 98, but it seems obvious that Windows Me simply cannot be 3 times faster in bootup time on average computers like some are claiming.

Well... I don't know what hacked out version you are using, but it takes me 15-25seconds to load WindowsMe (depending on my reason for rebooting), and the bootime was the same for my K6-2 450, K6-2 300, and P233... nuff said.

Dell is building "Fast Boot" PCs loaded with WinME. I saw a Dell prototype demonstrated that took about 25 seconds to boot from POWER ON to a USABLE desktop. Let me be clear... the 30 seconds includes POST and booting Windows, not just the time it takes Windows to load. Anyone that has taken a stopwatch to Windows on boot up knows this is pretty darn fast.

More info here: http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/newpc/fast-boot.htm.

MS and Dell are quite proud of this innovation and will be promoting it heavily when it comes to market.

As far as boot improvements on a regular system, I can say that there is really only a small difference in boot speed for me between Win98 and WinME on the same machine. And yes, I timed it.

Yeah, I know about the newer systems that include the "Fast Boot" feature. But I'm baffled by those who insist that Windows Me boots twice or three times as fast as Windows 98 on "normal" systems. If that were actually the case, then MS should/would be the promoting boot time of Me. I would assume they aren't actually measuring the boot time, but instead are just making inaccurate estimates.

I never doubted it could take 15-25 seconds to boot. But how does Me compare to 98 on the same system? That's the question.

Yes JR, you're right, we're all lying to you. It's a conspiracy, we all really work for Microsoft and we're trying to get some free promotion here. WRONG! Hey! Here's an idea for ya JR! Why don't you load up WinMe and actually see for yourself what the boot time is instead of sitting here telling people they're full of s***? Sheesh, I'd think you were a WinMe expert or something judging by your comments, but the truth is, you've never even tried it! I hate people who think they know it all but the fact is they don't know s***. The FACT is that on my computer, WinMe boots up in half the time of Win98. Believe it or not, but I'm not full of s***, cause I've actually tried it, and you HAVEN'T, thus, you have NO CREDIBILITY. Hopefully, you will learn from my suggestions and won't post back here saying "that's impossible." And yes, this comment is supposed to be rude and insulting, cause that's what you deserve for all the stupid, foundationless comments you bring to this forum. Don't expect me to waste any more time replying to your future posts either--cause this one pretty much says it all.

Sure, whatever. I have actually TIMED Windows Me against 98 to support my statements. It appears that have not, thus YOUR comments have no real credibility.

Thats really funny, something must be wrong with your computer my system booted much slower win 98se. I takes about 13 seconds for my computer to boot up 450Mhz K6-III.

WinME's boottime is much faster than Win98 on a machine that has a NIC installed.

that goes to you too with the pentium. intel-boy
try an AMD 375 MHz and see what it does.
especially a AMD k6/3 uh boy. have fun with it when win95 boots on about 8 seconds. win98 in about 20 and winme in about 14
MAKE SURE YOUR NIC CARD IS EITHER DISABLED OF FULLY CONFIGURED.
that's what slow down today computers. the nic card upon boot up it tries to find a DHCP server (upon windows' request) until that nic card gets an ip address, windows won;t continue to boot.
if a dhcp server is not available it'll take even longer for the card and windows to realise that. then it'll get a windows provided address that begins with 169.x.x.x
well. that just sucks time. try thinking before u place a coment.
PS. if u have 16-32-64 RAM in your computer. try going AT LEAST 128 before u place a coment. THANK YOU

nova897@hotmail.com

WHAT??????
bull s***. i guess i'd never have to spend money and buy a piece of crap cmputer like that.
firstly let me guess... it's intel based. anyone knows that intel sux and AMD rocks. only idiots who never touched a AMD will complain that their intel is faster. gimme a break.
secondly my "normal" pc boots faster to windows than the crappy -fast-boot-pc my a** computer.

The NIC card was fully configured with a static IP address in this particular test. (In my second test, I disabled the NIC.)

And this particular computer has 128MB memory.

LOL, the stupidity. The first truly decent chip AMD ever produced was the Athlon. K6's were always trampled by their Intel peers. But hey, don't take my word for it, check ANY benchmark.

Oh yeah, your right, the K-6 did have faster integer performance... with the Athlon AMD has faster FPU too... but the best processor depends upon its application.

Does anyone know how Compatible Windows ME is to Windows98 programs? For example Windows 2000 required new drivers for everything, will Windows ME require new hardware drivers for my hardware?

And how compatible is it with current games?

Windows Me uses the same driver model and kernel as Windows 98, so (theoretically) everything you have now should run on Me.

Hey if you don't want to download it then don't post and b**** to me about it that's your prob there are many people who love and hate warez. Anyway I have a new E-Mail since Prodigy deleted my account I have another by DJKLUE98@prodigy.net if your having probs e mailing me.. ANd **** YOU WAREZ BASHERS!!!!!!!!!!

Has anyone gotten their Win ME Golden CD yet in the mail?

They're sending them out on the 26th, so no, no one has it.

anyone has tryied the gold version yet?
where can i find it?

anyone has tryied the gold version yet?
where can i find it?

I have the final RC installed on my machine (clean install) I've not had a single problem with it yet.

Wow, I'm frightened! After making a bit of a song and dance about how I thought "It just works" wasn't such a good slogan for WinMe, it seems the new slogan for WinMe has now been changed to "Better Living in the Digital World".
I guess I don't have to explain that "It just works" can be interpreted two ways.
1. It installs on your pc and everything works right away. (yah right)
2. It installs on your pc and everything works after you've spent 1/2 and hour installing extra drivers not included and resetting some of the defaults which cause performance decrease and possible stability problems. :)) (this is the real world)

Have a hankey

Hoagie -

"Some testers" were having some "problems with the last round of betas." Win ME has gone "Release To MANUFACTURER," not to uninvited and apparently underknowledgeable warez-monsters. ME won't be out until September 14, except in the controlled environment of OEM integrated boxes.

Don't you worry your little head. Plenty of time for MS to get it ready with all the drivers neccessary for newbies who like to to get spoon fed.

about the warez thing... actually i found it early this morning on IRC. works like a charm =)

I sincerly doubt that you found the Gold version of WindowsMe in IRC seenig where as the testers don't even have a copy yet (they didn't post it for download)

yea you got me. im just trying to impress you. why would i lie about having it? same thing happened with windows2k.. the day after they released it to OEM, its on IRC. i dont know how they do it... i just find it.

An MS employee must be leaking them.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was found on IRC. In fact, I'm sure its probably there. You can find any pre-releases there. I'll take a look and report back...

Mr Moron
I am not a warez person. I am a beta tester. Duh!

Hoggie!

You claim to be a beta tester. I thought that MS was more selective. Most of the beta testers seem to understand what RTM and OEM mean.

And, btw, did you know that there's an agreement when you become a beta tester that forbids you from discussing the beta testing. If you were a beta tester and felt that you had to break the agreement, you wouldn't be stupid enought to do so in a public forum, would you?

NDA covers beta or unreleased code. WindozeMillennium is released!

Plus, how can discussing a publicly knows thing like the slogan be breaking the NDA? http://www.activewin/ has had screen shots of the box for a few days. I don't understand ya!

Until RTM is in your hands, all that you have to go on is beta. You aren't disclosing information about the RTM at all, although you may think you are. The NDA is still in effect. Ask any adult beta tester.

I have a linksys LNE-100TX pci nic in this winme(b2525) machine setup with 1 ip dhcp and other supposed to be set at a static number. For some reason after adding the static ip, then restarting it doesn't want to hold that ip in the networking configuration and i can only access this computer from my other from file and printer sharing for like 3 minutes after that restart to add it. Does anyone know if they addressed this problem or know what's causing it?

Wierd, is yours a PUREdata PNIC-100 card? Cause Windows Me and Windows 2000 both detect mine as LNE-100's hehe

Yes, I have the exact card, witht he exact same problem, but only on a clean install...
I told them about it, after about 6-7 times, they FINALLY e-mailed me about it, and then the programmer pretty much told me, "yeah right" and laughed.

Submitted your problem to www.itsnotworking.com ...maybe someone will have a solution there!

LOL! They actually said that? haha

The webmaster doesn't speak good english so it would be a good that if you wanted to ask him a question to use Altavista's Tranlation Page. He speaks german.

Check it out at http://jump.altavista.com/in_tf

Im currently running the rc2 release, but is the final version out on any warez sites yet ?

Go get a life for christs sake.

Thank God it's not available to testers until we get our CD's this time, so the lame majority of them can't pirate it out.

Freaken lamers.

Yada, Yada, Yada.. We all know what the hype is all about, but if your just coming along and reading this post keep reading (Unless you're a registered beta tester with Microsoft then this has nothing to do with you) because it may be worth-while rather than waiting til Sept 14th or paying Microsoft $2000. If you always wanted to get Windows Millennium before it actually was released to the public well here's your chance. Go to www.warez.com and in the search field type "Windows Millennium" and another window should pop-up and show a list of sites that are supplying the RC version of Millennium. Or if your looking for an easier way go to http://doppelkeks.dr.ag/ and choose anyone of the 3 mirrors and after you've logged into the site go to "System" and it should have what your looking for. The main server you'll be downloading will be a Homestead server chances are it'll be acting like a b**** at times so be sure you have GetRight or Go!Zilla. Also, since I'm talking about downloading an OS here just remember your not downloading the whole CD just the installation directory which is about 153 MB and is heavily compressed with extraction formats such as ZIP and RAR, so make sure your well equipted with a good extraction utility. If you need any help or the files which help you download and extract the files E-Mail me at DJKLUE98@freewwweb.com or at DJKLUE98@prodigy.net and I'll see what I can do for you.

Secondly, if your looking to contact the person who made this all possible contact him at SPACEWOLF2000@firemail.de. Finally if you still need assistance with the files and such contact the webmaster of http://doppelkeks.dr.ag/ via ICQ:67175886. Hope you enjoy the OS.

Sincerely,
DJKLUE@prodigy.net, DJKLUE98@freewwweb.com

Take Warez for what it is, who knows what you are getting, there is no way I would download an OS from a warez site. Who knows what it will do to your PC.

How stupid....

First off, you only gotta compress something once, and that's the most compression you get.

The betas available on MS's beta site are about 153mb too.... and they are only the normal cab files and zip files (for the extra stuff that's not cabbed).

Compressing it several times does absolutley nothing, it shows how stupid warezers are.

Just for your information, "warezers" don't compress files multiple times to try to shrink file sizes. The first compression (RAR or ACE) makes the files as small as possible, smaller than ZIP, and breaks the distribution into small pieces. The ZIP compression on top of that serves two purposes:

1) text files can be easily added to the zips, so sites or distributors can add their tag to it

2) automatic filecheckers on the FTP servers can verify individual ZIPs, while the RAR file format does not allow you to verify the integrity of the archive until all files have been uploaded. The server doesn't know if more RAR files are coming, so that's why ZIPs are used.

The "warez scene" is much, much bigger than badly designed web sites with pr0n banners. It has plenty of structure and efficiency (but that doesn't mean there are a zillion 12-year-old kiddies crawling around, begging for warez and looking like idiots).

2 words: Virus scan.

ok i just do two things mainly with my computer 1) i surf the internet, send email, instant message, and download mp3s, basically use the internet... and 2) i produce music. basically i want to know if i should upgrade to windows me when it comes out. my computer crashes constantly in windows 98. i need to stay with windows 9x because of the software i use for music production, but really would love to move on to something other than 98. any ideas? thanks.

Go to www.ntcompatible.com and check to see if your music software is 2000 compatible. If it is, I would definitely recommend switching. I also recommend that if you do switch you have somebody experienced back up your drive, fdisk (if needed), format, and do a clean install.

Just read this thread and have a few points to make....
I am running WinME 2525.6, it is definately more stable and quicker than Win98 on my machine (K6-2 300 o/c 366, 128Mb, Banshee). I was already running IE 5.5 on Win98, had no real probs with it on either OS. None of the programs I've installed have complained about needing Win9x, including ICQ2000 and RP8. When it's released in September I will certainly buy it :)

How exactly does one sign up for Windows beta testing? Is it still that old e-mail method to betareq, or whatever? I sent in an app probably 2 years ago and certainly it's not even up to date anymore. Is this still the only way into the beta program, other than being a developer, etc? Been testing all kinds products like a part-time job for a few years now. Really interested in finally being accepted by MS.

Windows Me will, regardless of the drive or partition you install it to, take over the boot record on the c drive. I think that microsoft has out-done themselves this time. not only that windows me will not allow you to boot up into ms-dos or allow you to restart in dos. I for one will not be using windows Me unless they come out with a patch for this problem.

Common knowledge; that's nothing new. All Windows versions since 95 have taken over the boot record.

News flash buddy. You will never be able to boot or exit into DOS while using Windows Me. It was taken out for a reason because DOS is old and isn't needed.

There won't be a patch because its not a problem. If you feel a certain love for the Dumb Operating System and don't want to part with it, stick with Windows 98.

News Flash: DOS is just hidden

News Flash: 99.9% of normal home users don't want to deal with DOS.

newsflash, it doesn't ever run DOS unless you go into msconfig and tell it to process the autoexec.bat and config.sys files.

For the record, I have 6 versions of Windows on one 6-gig hard drive, all of which boot just fine. Partition #1 is FAT16 with Windows 3.11 (MS-DOS 6.22). Partition #2 is also FAT16 with Windows 95 and NT 4.0 dual boot. Partition #3 is FAT32 with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 dual boot. Partition #4 is Windows Me. All of those OS's work perfectly. The trick I found is to use Partition Magic to hide all partitions except the one you're installing to (i.e. hide #1,3 and 4 if you're installing to #2, etc.) Windows 95 does overwrite the boot record, but the other versions of Windows don't. I could be wrong though.... if they do overwrite your boot record, just wait until you've got all your OS's installed, THEN install the boot manager program.
Also... I've had no luck with System commander and all those OS's. I recommend a small DOS utility called Os-bs (do a ftp search to find it)... It's a tiny menu for multiple boot systems (supports up to 4 primary partitions).
My only gripe with WinME is it removes the option to enter MS-DOS mode. Other than that, it's not much different from Win98. It's basically Windows 98 made to look more like Windows 2000, and with a few enhancements. Probably not worth the money you'll pay.

Hey, if they're gonna make it a severe pain in the a$$ to get into DOS "because noone uses it," how the heck are things that must be run from DOS gonna work? Things like flashing the BIOS? That's not a exactly a bad reason go get into a legacy OS.

no, that's not basically what it is...

Brand new TCP/IP stack with MANY enhancements, boot time is drastically improved, it's a LOT faster than 98, and it's a LOT more stable.

Boot disks still work. Just plop one in, turn on the machine, flashes bioses or whatever easily. If you really need dos, just boot off a Win98 startup disk (everyone's got 10 of these laying around) and press s*** + F5.

It won't let you boot into dos mode anymore, because it's not supposed to exist anymore. thats the Idea of ME. It's supposed to eliminate most of the things of windows that makes it unstable (un necessary dos support)

If your still using old as dirt programs, then you definitly need to stay where you are.

It's still based on DOS.

That is a horrible way to put it. If you are one of the majority of computer users you don't even know what a boot disk is. If the only way to get into dos is through a bootdisk for an older (not required for running ME) OS then that will not be a solution that the sane computer user will accept

Doh! I mean "NOT" accept. I was typing in a hurry cause I had a call here at work. I hate being a technical support wh***.

For those of who whom are interested, here's my Windows Me website along with an intro rant about what my team thinks about the OS.

http://www.vulpinearts.com/windowsinformer/

I found that the main goal for Windows Me was user friendliness. A new Home Networking wizard allows any end-user with absolutely NO knowledge setup a professional home network. The Internet Connection Sharing has been worked on GREATLY since it was really unstable when it was first introduced in Windows 98 Second Edition. It's also implemented into the Home Networking wizard, again, really easy and fast professional setup.

System Restore - Just an exaggerated continuation of Microsoft's Emergency Recovery Utility (ERU) which can be found on Windows 95 CD's. Again, just a large touch up and is really user friendly.

Help System - Help and Support is what they call it now. It's kind of too "heavy" and takes a while to load, but very useful for the no-brainer.

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is the same as Windows 2000's except the font is still MS Sans Serif, not Tahoma. Removal of the DOS backbone practically made the 9x OS about 60% more stable, almost like Windows 2000!

Overall, just Windows 98 with updated Microsoft products and a total makeover. Ideal for first-time Windows users. As for "Whistler", I can't wait! 64-bit yay! And its kernel consists of 9x and NT merged. But I'll bet it's only 32-bit emulated to be 64-bit just like now it's called kernel32.dll (16-bit emulated to 32-bit).

Man, you need a life. I heard how "user-friendly" Windows 98 was supposed to be, if you've got a problem with your system the amazing software gives you baloney anserws. As for 64 bit, if you want it that much, just get Linux. It's already out.

a) final 64bit Linux is not out
b) Intel is releasing Itanium as soon as MS finishes 64bit Windows.

CPU bit doesn't matter.
You can run Windows 95 on a 386!

I guess it only matters for improved performance, like utilization of the IA-64 (Intel Architecture 64)

What the heck are you talking about?

Bit does matter, just so you know, a 386 is a 32bit processor, Windows is 32bits, of course it can run on a 386...

Dang, I was hopeing to find a little more news on the winbeta site, but unfortunantly they havent said anything else except the info on RC2.

I just can't believe it that, once again, it's the humble beta tester is the last to know when the product that they have been slaving over a year is RTM'd.
For what it's worth, WinMe is a product rushed to the market because MS really doesn't care about the Win9x platform anymore. They want to start on Whistler Personal Edition and Whistler Busiess Edition ASAP.
I for one will stay with Win98SE, unless 4.90.3000.2 is a groundbreaking achievement, unlike previous builds.
Hasta!

Windowsme is quite a nice tweak to the Win9x kernel, it's far more easier to use with the new setup wizards, WMP 7 is really nice, it has Windows Movie Maker, it's a LOT faster (including boot time), it's a lot more stable, it has System Restore which is really nice if you just don't know what the heck went wrong (or how to fix what went wrong), there is a new TCP/IP stack (with a lot of nice enhancements), and a cool little video at the begining to show you about the OS, lol.

All in all, it's not a bad OS.

The RC works just fine on my system. Not a lot has changed - bug fixes, new colour scheme/icons, hibernate support, intelligent start menu/favorites, built in digital camera/scanner suport and internet versions of hearts, checkers etc. Sounds a lot, but it's not as big as the difference between Win95 and Win98 - yet it's bigger than the difference between Win98 and Win98 SE.
As for the build numbers - they've always done that. They make them very convenient - 950 for win95, 1998 for win98, 2222 for Win98SE and 3000 for Windows ME. Very round.

Installed it, no problem with it at all... its better than win98 and i really like the quick boot time

I've beta tested all the way through RC2 of WinME, and it still has bugs that Microsoft has not addressed. An irritating one, for example, is getting "MSHTML.DLL" when just pressing the "Back" button in IE 5.5. And it's ready for gold? Please!

Of course, YOU were supposed to REPORT all BUGS to Microsoft so they wouldn't have these in the final versions, not COMPLAIN about BETA software. Nothing personal. =)

I totally agree, this is a stability issue with IE5.5 and WinMe. It was reported a countless number of times. And surprise, surprise, it wasn't fixed. Typical.

yeah, I've reported a bug MANY times (6-7 times?), about driver support for my NIC, when I did a clean install on every single build since like the build before RC0, if I rebooted Windows, I would lose my default gateway every 5mins or so, unless I reinstalled Windows, but the same thing would happen. After about 5 times, I was e-mailed about it, I told him exactly what was happening, and the programmer pretty much laughed at me and said "yeah right".

I DID report the BUG to Microshaft SEVERAL times. It was ignored. No one's JUST complaining about Beta software. Just trying to tell people it's very buggy still, and save yourself $109. Any CUTE comments to that, genius? Nothing personal.

Ummmm... Actually IE 5.5 ALWAYS had the MSHTML.DLL bug... IE5 forward, and even IE4 have crashed in MSHTML.DLL! It's the nature of the beast, IE crashes often (and sometimes even in Win2K, though those are more recoverable), and the two most common crashes are in either the MSHTML.DLL or the SHDOCVW.DLL...

"Crashes often"? I've only had two IE 5 crashes this whole year, and I'm constantly browsing every day.

IE 4 crashed often (weekly), but IE 5 is remarkably stable in my experience.

What does a bug in IE have to do with the OS? Nobody that I know who upgrade to Me solely to get IE 5.5. And besides, MS has a good record of putting out hotfixes and service packs for IE, so chances are this problem will be fixed soon...

hey genius...it isn't RC2 that's being released. Thats why it was called RC2 back then, and its called Gold now. Try installing gold and see if you get the same error.

what? it "gives" you MSHTML.DLL? Like giving you a cookie, or a blow job =)? Did you maybe meant it gave you a page fault or protection fault _IN_ MSHTML.DLL?

I say, well done are completing one of the best operating systems I have ever seen. The best OS that Microsoft has ever released, I mean, other seems to go wrong with it. Beta 1 and 2 were very bad and didn't look all that great, after Beta 2 Refresh, things were looking good. Then at Beta 3, I was loving it. with the addition of Windows Media Player 7 and Internet Explorer 5.5, it was truly a great OS to work with. There are currently no bugs or problems with my copy.

A lot of people are complaining that it has bugs and stuff. Well I have to tell them, it's your computer that's the problem, not the operating system, if 99 % of the users have no bugs, and the 1% do. Hmm, can you blame the Os for that?? not really, you have to blame the carelessness of the user...get a new computer, get some knowledge in computers or fresh install it. If you don't like it, go back to Windows 98. Stop complaining, you could never do any better, that's a promise.

So I close with this, Windows Me is the greatest, no problems, no bugs, speedy and stable operating system. Best ever, hope MS does 100 times better with Windows Whistler, the next NT OS coming out in the near future.

I must comment.

Here is my computer configuration.

Pentium II 400
Geforce 256 SDR
Sound Blaster Live! mp3+
Intel BX motherboard

Lots of people have this configuration and hardware man.

This computer was built from the ground up, with a fresh install of Windows ME RC2, which gave me the bugs. I build computers for a living, so, yea its safe to say I know what I'm doing.

So, what you're trying to say is that people should build their computers around an OS? Umm, I don't think so guy :) Companies who write OS's need to make sure their OS will work on any type of computer you throw at it. Since when have consumers had to build or modify a computer around a program? (exception of extra memory)

You've got your thought process a little a** backward. If the bugs only show up with a certain percentage of testers, the bugs EXIST and must be fixed.

Oh and one more thing... i HIGHLY doubt that my sound card or something will prevent RealPlayer from installing correctly ;) Does RealPlayer magically say "MMm no i don't like your sound card so I won't install."

Doesn't that seem a little lame to you?

Well I have to unplug my USB scanner otherwise it won't boot, I don't call this stable.

Dude, what have you been smoking? Try using WInME for some time..like 24/7 and run some serious aplications, not just mIRC and IE. Stable? Yah, right. Best OS ever? Umm..ever heard of Linux, Beos, Windows 2000 (okay, they suck, but still, better than ME). Get real man and don't write crap like that on this site.

You wrote:
-----
So, what you're trying to say is that people should build their computers around an OS? Umm, I don't think so guy :) Companies who write OS's need to make sure their OS will work on any type of computer you throw at it. Since when have consumers had to build or modify a computer around a program? (exception of extra memory)
-----

Since when has Windows worked on a Mac or MacOS worked on a Wintel PC? :) OSs aren't made to work on ANY computer, they are made to work on a specific one. If the machine changes, it doesn't mean the OS or applications will - it depends on what is mainstream hardware.

No bugs? No issues?
Surely you jest!

99%? Get real! I have hand-picked, top quality components in my computer, and I can tell you that ME is only marginally stable enough to release. Scanner buttons don't work (Epson, HP), many installation programs simply don't work, programs crash, MS Publisher 2K doesn't work right, several programs (including ACDSee) aren't able to grab window focus properly. The MS Intellipoint software doesn't work right. The MS Intellitype software doesn't install. There are way too many "Explorer Crashes". Want more? There's a lot more! MS stopped including their Release Notes 2 or 3 builds ago, and I know why. It's because they have chosen to ignore many issues that were formerly under investigation, and wanted to keep this quiet. OK, it's a nice OS. It has some great features, and I'll end up using it. However, it's *far* from being finished and bug-free. It needed 2 or 3 more builds for de-bugging. Shame on MS for not going the extra mile for their customers and resolving more bugs.

well when he said all pc's i think he meant the ones that run on x86 platform

Do You know what is Win HCL? Check it @ http://www.microsoft.com/hcl/default.asp

For everyone: HCL stands for Hardware Compatibility List.

The scanner problems is because of Epson and HP, not MS.
They right software that only works for Widndows98, or Windows95, and they are now working on Windows2000 software, which is taking them forever. There software only works with one OS, and you have to wait for them to release it for that OS.

You are forgetting that they have daily internal builds, and in this case, they probably had a couple of builds a day. ie, they were debugging it, they just didn't release it to the testers.

Ok, since this project is officially finished now, I feel safe enough to convey my thoughts about the beta and where it went. I was accepted to the test at Beta 2 Refresh. While still buggy, I thought this OS had potential. By the time RC0 was released, I thought to myself "Ok... if this is a release candidate for final, why are there still these bugs in the code?" When RC2 was released and the bugs I had submitted were STILL not fixed or even addressed, I started to get worried about another Windows 98 being released.

The bugs I found which, to my knowledge, were not fixed are as follows:

1. When installing RealPlayer 8, the install program will crap out halfway through installation and must be started again.

2. Clicking RealPlayer movies from Explorer will hang RP8. You must open the movie from INSIDE RealPlayer.

3. Clicking on url links from programs like mIRC, ICQ, etc, will hang the program which must be terminated manually. The workaround is to copy the url, open an IE window manually, then paste.

4. The ICQ2000a install program will sometimes randomly freeze and must be restarted.

5. Some programs whose install programs check what OS you're running might display "This program can only be installed on Windows 98 or Windows 2000" (ex: Creative WebCam Go! drivers and programs)

5. WinZip installation will hang if you choose Express Setup. Choosing Custom Setup will install fine.

I was informed that only a small population of beta testers experienced these bugs, while the majority didn't, and that's why these bugs are not going to be specifically addressed for final. Good move, Microsoft. That means that a small percentage of consumers who buy Windows Me will ALSO come across these bugs and won't be very happy about it.

I was pleased about Windows Me and how it was coming along. I was certain that this new OS would change the face of Microsoft consumer OS's and prove to the public that they can make a worthy consumer OS. But unless these bugs are fixed in 3000.2, I don't care WHO encounters them (if even ONE person encounters them, the bugs exist), Windows Me will not receive the approval from those consumers who still encounter them.

Ok, since this project is officially finished now, I feel safe enough to convey my thoughts about the beta and where it went. I was accepted to the test at Beta 2 Refresh. While still buggy, I thought this OS had potential. By the time RC0 was released, I thought to myself "Ok... if this is a release candidate for final, why are there still these bugs in the code?" When RC2 was released and the bugs I had submitted were STILL not fixed or even addressed, I started to get worried about another Windows 98 being released.

The bugs I found which, to my knowledge, were not fixed are as follows:

1. When installing RealPlayer 8, the install program will crap out halfway through installation and must be started again.

2. Clicking RealPlayer movies from Explorer will hang RP8. You must open the movie from INSIDE RealPlayer.

3. Clicking on url links from programs like mIRC, ICQ, etc, will hang the program which must be terminated manually. The workaround is to copy the url, open an IE window manually, then paste.

4. The ICQ2000a install program will sometimes randomly freeze and must be restarted.

5. Some programs whose install programs check what OS you're running might display "This program can only be installed on Windows 98 or Windows 2000" (ex: Creative WebCam Go! drivers and programs)

5. WinZip installation will hang if you choose Express Setup. Choosing Custom Setup will install fine.

I was informed that only a small population of beta testers experienced these bugs, while the majority didn't, and that's why these bugs are not going to be specifically addressed for final. Good move, Microsoft. That means that a small percentage of consumers who buy Windows Me will ALSO come across these bugs and won't be very happy about it.

I was pleased about Windows Me and how it was coming along. I was certain that this new OS would change the face of Microsoft consumer OS's and prove to the public that they can make a worthy consumer OS. But unless these bugs are fixed in 3000.2, I don't care WHO encounters them (if even ONE person encounters them, the bugs exist), Windows Me will not receive the approval from those consumers who still encounter them.

I thought I would point out that half of the "bugs" you listed were problems with beta software, and therefore could be attributed to the software just as much as the OS. Realplayer 8 and icq2000 are both in beta. If I were you, I wouldn't test an OS's stability using beta software. Use software known to be stable so you can have at least some kind of a base case.

Secondly, the problem of some software not installing because it "requires Windows 95 or 98" is a bug in the install program and not the OS. I remember when Windows 98 came out, I couldn't install some of my software, because it gave an error saying it required Windows 95.

I thought I would point out that half of the "bugs" you listed were problems with beta software, and therefore could be attributed to the software just as much as the OS. Realplayer 8 and icq2000 are both in beta. If I were you, I wouldn't test an OS's stability using beta software. Use software known to be stable so you can have at least some kind of a base case.

Secondly, the problem of some software not installing because it "requires Windows 95 or 98" is a bug in the install program and not the OS. I remember when Windows 98 came out, I couldn't install some of my software, because it gave an error saying it required Windows 95.

ICQ 2K, real player 8 - beta?

woo.. i'm no expert on WinME, frankly i've never used it before... and i am prolly not going to start using it until they release the 2nd version of it anyways.. Windows 98 was such a crapped out OS the first time around, then when they released SE (final) i upgraded to that. I was using win2k betas during the time, so i needed a 'stable' he he he... operating system to do my work in and windows98 WAS NOT the os. The reason why i stuck to it was because it was nice (gradient titlebars) and i liked the easier to access menus. Now with win2k out, i RARLEY boot into 9x. Windows 9x is TERRIBLE for stability, and i need stable OSes.
With all my friends trying out winme, and all these networking problems, how it actually CRASHED my friend's active directory (does winme support active dir??) i won't even CONSIDER to use winme till it goes SE hehe
they are really prolonging the process to eliminate the 9x kernel.. and i don't know why..
well thats my opion.
DaNi SarFatI

The only one of those that I experiance was the mIRC crashing when you click a link (which only happened after extended use of the OS, with intense apps like Photoshop).

btw, ICQ2k isn't technically beta, Mirabilis (or AOL) has offically released it, even though it is marked as beta (as is every other officially released ICQ version).

Something to think about! Your installing Beta software on a beta operating system. I see the Problem!!

I'm like the rest of you all, almost 500 builds in roughly 3 weeks? I can guess they wanted to give that build number but thats highly unlikely. Builds indicate constant recompiles etc. Lets just say that if RC2 2535 was good, you can imagine how much more stable and good final is. But still...that many builds? heh I'd like to have the paychecks of the overtime those guys put in.

What a stupid comment. Do you think these build numbers are just by chance?

950 - Windows 95
1111 - Windows 95 OSR2
1998 - Windows 98
2222 - Windows 98 SE
3000 - Windows Me

It is beyond obvious that MS is purposely assigning certain build numbers to their final releases.

How could it be release 3000.2? The last release to beta testers was 2535, RC-2. 465 releases in the last 3 weeks? lol

Microsoft skips build numbers. They decide on what number they want the final build to be and they make it that number. They did the same thing with Win95, Win98, Win98SE.

no... they don't "skip" build numbers...

They have daily internal builds, the fact that they are on 3000 shows how many times that recompiled the OS with bug fixes over the past 2weeks.

Okay, like, NO!
They don't PURPOSELY recompile it many times so that it's a number they want! You think they care? How come 98 is 1998.6? The skipped to 1998 then had to do more changes so they made it 1998.6 and Win98SE is 2222A or 2222B whatever. They skip numbers but it doesn't matter either!

Oh yeah, and what about Win98/SE to WinMe? 4.10.XXXX to 4.90.XXXX
Are you now going to say they compiled it 800,000 times to get it from 4.1 to 4.9?

Wrong! They do. You think, just by some odd coincidence, Windows Me ended up with 3000 being the final release?

Or Windows 98 SE being 2222?

Or Windows 95 OSR2 being 1111?

Nope, sorry. They indeed deliberately skip build numbers.

umm... no, they moved up to 4.10.x for the first build of it.

I have been using RC0 for a while and its not bad - definetly better than win98SE but it still crashes sometimes and needs daily reboot to clean up memory. However it is more stable than win98 and for sure much faster than win2k so gamers will have most fun from it (yes, quake3 is faster on winme compared to win2k)...should everyone get it? yep...sure should, together with copy of win2k for more serious stuff...

Have you tried RamIDLE? I've been using it for a couple of weeks and it's pretty good. It automatically reclaims the wasted memory, or you can manually free up what you need. I haven't had to reboot near as much now, and then only because a program locked up the machine.

well yeah I tried lots of memory managers - but you still have to reboot eventually....in win98 that would be each few hours....

Doesn't Quake3 take advantage of 2 processors if you have them in Win2k? If so, on my home box (a dual c500 bp6) it _should_ run faster. For those single proc games, Win98 still seems faster although not as stable as 2k.

reboot every few hours??? Do you have 16 megs of ram? or just not know what you're talking about?

wtf are u talkign about?
with 128mb ram i still need the reboot likeevery 6 hours or something.
thats why i use win2k.
and about this winme being faster for games? hrm... maybe it could be true but we need to know ur sys spex. cuz win2k after it has like 128mb, and a p2-400 processor it rox

RamIDLE (and every other memory manager out there) will not do anything to free up your system resources. The only thing they free up is RAM, which is pretty not really necesary since Windows 98 does this automatically. Whenever you run a program that needs more ram then available, win 98 puts stuff in ram onto the HD to give that program room, which is EXACTLY what the ramIdle does). You need a memory manager that cleans up the GDI/User memory areas, which both only have about 128k available I think, no matter how much ram you have. No memory manager does anything about cleaning those areas, and those are the areas that need the cleaning.

hm....Athlon 650@824, 256MB ram, geforce 2. Win2k runs good...but not as fast as win98SE. Haven't tried winME yet but my guess is it will still be faster for games. I reboot my PC once a week at the most, using win98SE.

LOL!
RamIDLE... thats a nice idea... sounds like it works. But correct me if im wrong, shouldn't that be something the OS does on its own? Hello!
I mean... this is supposed to be consumer based, for all the jack-know-nothing windoze users. How the hell are they supposed to know how to use that? If MS was stupid enough ... they'd prolly allow them to free up the mem used by the kernel... which no doubt is 25% leaked mem anyways....
Second of all ... i dont know what you people do... but i Can run Win95B on my system for a couple of days before rebooting. NT4, hell at least a week. Course i can use linux and reboot about every two months or more. ;)
Lastly... i think MS is gonna keep realeasing new Versions based on 9x just so they can prove that someday the kernel will evovle to a extremly stable memory-leak free OS... based on DOS! ;)

I run Win98 for days at a time without rebooting; sometimes I leave the computer running for a week straight. Unless a program crashes I don't understand this having to reboot every few hours stuff. I wouldn't stand for that one second.

The only time I ever reboot is when a) I've installed a few apps that require a reboot, which I really want to use, or b) I have new hardware that I need to install.

umm... no, Win98 does not do this...

What RAMIdle does is plop everything that's in the RAM onto the virtually memory on your harddrive so it can defragment( for lack of a better term) your memory, and then it places it back onto the real RAM.

Yeah it should, but I'm sure if they put it in, they would get sued for anti-trust again.... it's just plain pathetic that MS can't do anything to really add to their OS anymore w/o getting lots of flames.
They haven't been able to do this since DOS, w/o getting flamed for it.

Windows2000 has enharent multiprocessing... meaning that every app takes advantage of multiprocs.

I usually leave it on all day long unless a program someone else used screws it up (Need For Speed High Stakes).

They can't drastically improve the Win9x without breaking backward compatibility.

Not every app. Only apps that are multi-threaded, e.g. Q3. Most apps are not.

Win9x kernel, I mean

Defragmenting ram is also pointless...as that would save you a few miliseconds at the most, maybe even free up 1 or 2k. And win98 does do that (not deframenting tho')...but it does it on the fly...all ramIdle will do is it will do pretend it's a big program and load itself into ram, so windows dumps stuff from ram onto virtual memory and ramIdle unloads itself, then when u launch a huge program, win98 won't have to dump stuff into virtual memory as much. Saving you maybe one second of waiting. It definetly won't keep your computer running longer tho'...and if you say it does, it's all in your head.

Win98 kernel is not that bad. Sure it may crash, but the more programs you have running and installed, the more likely it is to crash. Win2K does a great job of rebuilding itself after a crash (look at the task bar after a crash and you'll see), but WinME 2525.6 has never crashed on me. Its a nice OS, but I'll only use it for games, considering I'm a graphic designer and use lots of memory when designing, so I'll stick to Win2K for the stability.

You really have no clue...

Get a RAM monitoring program, and rip a CD, when it is done, you will notice that your RAM is VERY low, then run an app that reclaims the RAM, you will notice how it suddenly gets more RAM.

Windows98 does NOT do this on the fly.

Check this out, I went to install my DSL software onto WIn2K, and it told me, THIS SOFTWARE IS NOT FOR DUAL-PROCESSOR SYSTEMS, then it aborted the install.
One catch, there is no SMP enabled version.

Ain't it cool that you can go to the system settings and change between Single/Multi-processors and reboot and have it work. :)

Did that, re-installed the DSL stuff, changed back to Multi-processor system, and it works.

a quick question, i'm using win98 and win2k.

i'm a graphics designer and i wanted to know if...

i can install windows me and then do a fresh install of win2k so i can have both Win2k and WinME on the same partition like i have it now with Win98

is it possible (also) to be able to run Win98, Win2k and WinME seperately without partitioning, I know you can do a fresh install of win2k and have win98 on the same partition but can you have Windows ME and Win98 on the same partition cuz i don't wanna lose the ability to use my CD Burner...

You should always install different Windows versions on different partitions. Otherwise, things in your Program Files directory (like Internet Explorer) will get overwritten when you install the new version.