A few WinMe questions

[Arminius]

I have been looking through the old posts in the Windows 95/98/98SE/ME forum and there are some questions I can't find answers to. I am wondering if any current or former WinMe users out there have used some of the hacks/mods on MDGx's site?

http://www.mdgx.com/me1.htm

In particular I am wondering if anyone noticed much in the way of performance or stability improvements by removing System Restore and PcHealth. I figure not having them running in the background all the time should at least speed things up somewhat.

The next thing I am wondering about is will WinMe still run if the DOS 8 is replaced with the DOS 7.1 from Win98SE? I suspect that may have been tried before but I don't remember exactly.

Third. What is the name of the file that is responsible for the shutdown dialog box in it in Win98SE and ME?

I used 98FE from 1999 to 2004, and 98SE from 2004 to the present. I know about 98SE2ME and I know that most people think ME sucks. Nevertheless if anyone has any specific information they would like to share I would appreciate it. Thought I might take ME for a test drive on a spare computer and tinker with it.

[dencorso]

The next thing I am wondering about is will WinMe still run if the DOS 8 is replaced with the DOS 7.1 from Win98SE? I suspect that may have been tried before but I don't remember exactly.

Not at all.

[pointertovoid]

Removing System Restore: I do it on each WinMe for I imagine it speeds up booting. But I didn't make a with/without comparison. As for stability, WinMe is decently stable without System Restore - and with it supposedly as well.

DOS, or rather console I guess: I would refrain from swapping it from W98, as it works a very different way on WMe. Not really native here. And as you may observe, the startup files meant for the console are gone at WMe - which partly explains its faster bootup.

Many people believe and allege Me sucks BUT so fewer people actually tried it... I had W95a-95b-98fe-98se-Me and, if you have the necessary hardware, Me is definitely the best among them, for speed, stability, and of course for being younger; on even smaller hardware, W95b is better; and W98fe-se is just the worst Win I've ever had, by far. But maybe the bugged Via chipsets hit me as I had W98 and hit other people as they got WMe. So yes, try WMe, it's definitely worth it if your hardware is from that era.

[galahs]

Windows Me has better memory management than Win98 doesn't it?

[Ken-mkII]

Remove System Restore will speed up the WinME operation quite a lots, especially on older system such as Pentium MMX 200Mhz or less. And PCHealth, I don't remove it since it take less resource only.

And as I know, WinME's IOS is different than 98's DOS 7.1. I don't think it work without modify ME files (Don't you remember that modification to make ME boot do DOS?)

And for Shutdown, I poperly create a shortcut which contain "C:\Windows\RUNDLL32.EXE user,exitwindows" (without quote). Or using "rundll32.exe shell32.dll,SHExitWindowsEx n" (which n repersent number as follow to make different action:)

0 - LOGOFF

1 - SHUTDOWN

2 - REBOOT

4 - FORCE

8 - POWEROFF

Hope those infos could help.

Best Regards,

Ken-mkII (Aka. Ken Yaksa)

[dencorso]

To remove System Restore and other tricks: OppComME

[Arminius]

Not at all.

DOS, or rather console I guess: I would refrain from swapping it from W98, as it works a very different way on WMe. Not really native here. And as you may observe, the startup files meant for the console are gone at WMe - which partly explains its faster bootup.

And as I know, WinME's IOS is different than 98's DOS 7.1. I don't think it work without modify ME files (Don't you remember that modification to make ME boot do DOS?)

Yeah, I remember there was a patch that would allow ME users to boot into DOS. From a practical point of view there is no need to go further than that. However I had been giving some thought to whether replacing DOS 8.0 with 7.1 (along with the correct files from 98SE) would restore the "Restart in MS-DOS mode" option to the Windows shutdown dialog box.

I believe there are some files missing from the root directory in WinMe, Config.sys and Autoexe.bat. I recall reading that even if those files were copied to the root directory manually WinMe would delete them at some point. I have a hunch they are deleted by ME's Wininit.exe.

A few months ago I had installed ME without System Restore, PC Health, WMP, Movie Maker, using the customized Setuppp.inf file that is available. Installing some of the updates was problematic but could be done. The OS was more responsive than the standard install. Everything was running well and then the hard drive failed. I can't blame ME for that.

I have also been thinking about sourcing files from the beta versions of ME to see if they could be used to make ME more 98SE-like in it's behaviour. The worst thing that could happen is that they won't work.

It is too bad MS rushed ME to market. Despite it's bad reputation I think it could be quite a good operating system on the right hardware.

[lightning slinger]

However I had been giving some thought to whether replacing DOS 8.0 with 7.1 (along with the correct files from 98SE) would restore the "Restart in MS-DOS mode" option to the Windows shutdown dialog box.

I have also been thinking about sourcing files from the beta versions of ME to see if they could be used to make ME more 98SE-like in it's behaviour.

You could call it ME298SE and what with you going in one direction and MDGx with 98SE2ME going in the opposite direction you are bound to pass each other at some point in the future!

[sp193]

It is too bad MS rushed ME to market. Despite it's bad reputation I think it could be quite a good operating system on the right hardware.

Yea, it's a pity. However, you also need good software(That's properly written), and not only good hardware.

I believe there are some files missing from the root directory in WinMe, Config.sys and Autoexe.bat. I recall reading that even if those files were copied to the root directory manually WinMe would delete them at some point. I have a hunch they are deleted by ME's Wininit.exe.

Hmm, not missing files, but I think it was files that you had to copy to your C:\ after applying the "MS-DOS mode hack".

I think that it was Windows ME reading the AUTOEXEC.bat and CONFIG.sys and copies them to (Or was it a file?) the system registry, and deleted the originals.

I have also been thinking about sourcing files from the beta versions of ME to see if they could be used to make ME more 98SE-like in it's behaviour. The worst thing that could happen is that they won't work.

Quite likely you'll succeed, provided that MS had a MS-DOS mode in pre-release versions of Windows ME. However, I have to disagree that the worst thing that could happen is that it won't work. The worst thing is that it will still work, but causes great instability and/or mass data corruption.

Windows Me has better memory management than Win98 doesn't it?

Doesn't seem like, seems to be roughly the same. Blame the program's programmers if you actually experience real bad memory leaks (That are not the "natural memory leaks" in Windows but caused by badly written programs) .

In particular I am wondering if anyone noticed much in the way of performance or stability improvements by removing System Restore and PcHealth. I figure not having them running in the background all the time should at least speed things up somewhat.

I tried removing IE, and using the Windows 95 shell. This also disabled System restore and perhaps PcHealth too, but ME DID become a lot faster and a LOT more stable. I did that about 4-5 years ago, way before I started programming SH95UPD.

The next thing I am wondering about is will WinMe still run if the DOS 8 is replaced with the DOS 7.1 from Win98SE? I suspect that may have been tried before but I don't remember exactly.

It won't run, plus almost all of it's MS-DOS tools won't work(As they are tied to MS-DOS 8.00).

However, there is a hack out there that "enables" Windows ME's MS-DOS mode(This was discussed in a thread here, but I can't remember where, nor the hack's name), but I think that it isn't as good as the real option provided by Windows 95/98.

It isn't as good as there isn't a solid feel to it, plus my MS-DOS games won't work on Windows ME's MS-DOS(After applying the hack), but works properly on Windows 98's MS-DOS 7.10.

I used 98FE from 1999 to 2004, and 98SE from 2004 to the present. I know about 98SE2ME and I know that most people think ME sucks. Nevertheless if anyone has any specific information they would like to share I would appreciate it. Thought I might take ME for a test drive on a spare computer and tinker with it.

Well, after tweaking with Windows ME in the past, I do think that it isn't so bad after all. It actually has better startup speed than Windows 98, does not use the MS-DOS scandisk to scan your HDD after every bad shutdown (Windows 98's MS-DOS scandisk corrupted ALL my long filenames).

Stability can also become "rock solid" if ME was tweaked (Maybe even on par with my modded Windows 98 SE system... but I did not keep that ME installation long enough to see if my modding actually had any long-term side effects).

Yes, I'm more than willing to share with others what I gained from my old research... and that also makes me feel better after knowing that all the hours I "wasted" are still useful, and can help others.

Edited October 29, 2009 by sp193

[Arminius]

The next thing I am wondering about is will WinMe still run if the DOS 8 is replaced with the DOS 7.1 from Win98SE? I suspect that may have been tried before but I don't remember exactly.

It won't run, plus almost all of it's MS-DOS tools won't work(As they are tied to MS-DOS 8.00).

I suppose ME's DOS tools would also have to be replaced by those from 98SE or perhaps an ME beta. Even so there is no guarantee they would work then either.

I am going to have to give this whole idea more thought. I have a few ME betas to play with though perhaps they are too ME-like, not early enough in the transition of 98SE to ME. I'll install them first to see how they are put together before I put too much time into trying to replace DOS 8.0 with 7.1.

Thank you sp193. Your comments have been very valuable.

[sp193]

Well, I thought that it'll be interesting for some of you to know: I DID try to replace MS-DOS 7.10 with MS-DOS 7.00 before(I think about 4-5 years back).

Use "sys c:" from an Windows 95B/C/D/E(4.00.950B/C/D/E) startup diskette. Don't use 4.00.950/4.00.950a/4.00.950A as they do not support FAT32.

Windows 98 still booted properly, but at startup there was an ominous error message that said something like "Invalid version: 4.00.950"...

I can't remember if the Windows 98SE MS-DOS tools still worked though. I did that a long time ago as I felt (At that time) that the Windows 95 startup logo looked better than the Windows 98 startup logo.