Molly Dawn

artic silver or artic silver + copper shim definately. thermal pads have been obsolete since the first pentium-mmx hit 233mhz. OEM's just use them cause they're cheap.

While I am promarily now a windows 7 user, I still use windows ME occasionally (really lod games that dont like compatibility mode but need full hardware 3d acceleration thus ruling out using a VM) That being said my win ME rig is a real beast for that OS. Athlonxp 3800+ 4x256mb ddr400 (rloew patch) 160gb wd velociraptor on IDE/Sata adapter (120gb windows partition rest unused/unallocated) Radeon X850 256mb AGP8x gpu) it certifies as bare minimum to run vista, but its blazingly fast on ME (feels like 7 does on a quadcore and ssd). I run a pagefile of 256mb, Creative audio soundcard (pci) and ISA 10base-T ethernet card (connected to a wifi repeater with ethernet port configured to serve as a wifi to ethernet adapter). thought thats more for LAN than internet as I've yet to get a browser working these days. email does work, but getting thunderbird working was a pain in itself. It does its job well enough at any rate, and I have windows 7 for all that fancy internet stuff anyway.

Virtual PC is probably your best bet on a 9x host, and you should use a fully updated win ME as the host machine, as it is the most up to date of the 9x series, and has functionality not present in the others (but loses real mode dos without a patch). and the upper limit would be windows 7 as a guest as its the last windows to have a 32 bit version. and limit the guest updates to those before the march 2015 updates that require sse2 support for best results. Note: I actually did this for a month to get familiar with 7 back in the day, before I finally made the move from win ME to win 7 properly. Use either a Athlonxp 3000+ or better, or a 3.0ghz or faster P4 (preferrably prescott core as ME loves L2 cache) Most of the hardware related crashes can be attributed to printer issues, or CPUs like the duron and celeron lines that lack or have very little L2) thats assuming you have Rlowe's RAM patch. if not then limit installed memory to 1gb or less and limit memory in windows to 512mb to avoid issues.

same thing I did when 9x support ended, keep running 7 like I did ME back then, until internet connectivity becomes too big of a hassle to get a working browser, but when that happens I'll just move to linux as I am quite familiar with several popular distros already.

the Intel chipset will be one of your biggest hurdles. They started limiting compatibility early on, and making headaches for installs. AMD Ryzen has issues too, but from what I've read on here and Toms hardware, skylake and later intel CPU's are a real pain to get running on 7

I have a second PC still using a mechanical HDD (WD black 1tb) and I want to upgrade it to a SSSD like my main system. I was looking at this SSD (Crucial MX500 1TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5 Inch Internal SSD, up to 560MB/s - CT1000MX500SSD1) on Amazon as a potential upgrade but before I buy it I wanted to check MSFN and see if anyone can confirm it works with windows 7 home premium x64 which I have on the c in question (Main PC is Opteron 3350 running win 7 x64 enterprise) The PC in question I plan to upgrade is Phenom II x4 980 @3.8ghz (1,3975v) Corsair H100I cooler, MSI R9 390x gpu, Asus M5a87-plus motherboard, and 2x8gb Crucial DDR3 1866 11-11-11-32 @ DDR3 1600 9-9-9-28 1T (1.525v) My reason for wanting to upgrade this machine to an SSD like my main computer, is my husband Rodney (who is also a msfn member) and I live off grid, and the power savings of the SSD (as well as the more responsive system) are a huge plus. Apologies in advance for slow replies. My husband is a veterinarian and I am a veterinary technician/nurse, so we are often very busy. Please be patient and I will read any replies as soon as possible

PATA or "IDE" interface SSDs DO exist, and are still manufactured although they are pricy. Just look on Amazon for a few examples (selection is limited as its a niche market) Anything from 8-128gb DOM (Disk on module) as well as 320gb+ fule size SSds. Another option that would essentially fell like a SSd due to the limitations of the ATA133 interface, and its throughput capabilities, is a WD Velociraptor mechanical HDD. the new ones are all SATA, but a SATA to IDE adapter solves that issue, and should be compatibile for everything from 9x/ME all the way to 7 (and probably later but I can't guarantee that. as I don't use 8-8.1-10,etc) as mechanical drives go a velociraptor is the best you can get, and for a PATA system with a SATA adapter probably your best bet, as you'll get the maximum performance of the ATA133 bus, as you would with a SSD, but without the SSD related quirks, like needing to disable superfetch and enable trim, etc.

I'd say comparing it to windows ME and windows Vista RTM is being unfair to those Os'es. Having been a long time user of windows ME, I can say it is very much possible to get it to run smoothly, and what little I used Vista it seemed the biggest issues were similarly hardware related. Neither locked you into requiring the latest intel hardware and would run happily on AMD so long as you had enough ram and a fast processor. Neither spied on you the way 11 and 10 do either, nor did they require a constant internet connection. Guess I'll be passing on this windows too.

No No I won't be using windows 10. 7 works fine for me, and I am not going to use a spyware ridden os with a clunky ugly UI whatsoever. Personally I think 10 is garbage. Even win 9x has a nicer UI and it doesn't have all the aero eyecandy that 7 has, but still I'd prefer 9x /ME over 10 any day.

Great would be an understatement, though it was of course not without a learning curve as all new systems are. That being said, I essentially went straight from win ME to 7 when the first beta rolled out and been using some version of 7 ever since. I did toy with vista a bit but got frustrated with the compatibility issues with hardware causing instability and ended up going back to ME on that machine (Athlonxp 3800+) until the first beta of 7 came out. I still use windows 7, and after having briefly experienced 8 8.1 and 10 on new laptops (now upgraded to 7) I can honestly say I will be using windows 7 forever. If such a time comes that it becomes so tedious to even get internet browsing and email working, as had happened on ME, then I will just move to linux. Comparing to other os's (windows) 7 is faster, looks nicer (except vista which looks just as nice) and runs smoother, and on a wider variety of hardware than any other windows. It also doesn't have the hardware issues that plagued both ME and Vista, and provided you omit the telemetry KBxxxx updates doesn't have the spyware stuff that newer windows has. so to summarize, fast, stable, and compatible. the compatibility mode for older programs works pretty well most of the time too. I've had it on old and new hardware alike, from the Athlonxp (beta builds) to a relatively modern fx9850 with r9 390x graphics, and pretty much everything in between with no issues. I would recommend 7 to anyone very highly. The only real complaint I have is there seems to be no way to get certain old games (specifically Mechwarrior 3 and pirates moon) to run on 7 that I have found, so I have to keep an old Athlon xp machine with ME on it set up for that game. other than that, I've had no issues with 7 whatsoever.