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is it worth it?


colemancb

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@rhelic and siim04

I won't switch back from ME to 98SE that is sure as I only share your appreciation on ME over 98SE if speaking about a standard out of the box installation. Once System File Protection and System Restore are removed filesystem speed is equal if not better than 98SE in my subjective judgement. Once all the other unnecessary services are either shut or removed, I find that it is pretty much similar to 98SE with the bonus of higher stability in low free resources situation and generic USB mass storage support. I also found it necessary to remove by hand (as there is no utilities for doing so unlike for all the rest) the Scanner and Camera Wizzard/Still Image Monitoring component who is buggy enough to regularly almost freeze the OS after loading stimon.exe as a background task for no known reason. Besides this, all the other performance tweaks I use on ME, I was also using them on 98SE.

Thanks for your opinions and advice on 2003. I'll most probably try it some day aside my WinME install if that's possible as with 2000 and XP, just to see what it is.

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Superlevel,

Maybe I won't recommand w98se on a laptop, for driver reasons. Unless you are will willing to spend some times to test it.

Often laptop come with specific drivers, or even an adapted windows version optimized and therfore faster, for these laptop.

So if you try w98se+sp2, make sure to test your system in full (data transfer, program speed, internet speed etc).

I mean, on a PC you can easily downloead the driver for each device, while on a laptop you have it under a apackage.

But the best OS is the one that YOU think is the best.

Siim04 wrote

But for surfing, multimedia, news, user-responsiveness, ease of use, other than software development work Windows XP is far superior

I don't agree. XP is too much pre-configured and much more difficult to have it behaving "as you want it". Especialy with multimedia.

(just try to NOT have Windows media Player preselected everytime you insert a CD-r in the CD drive...)

In one word if your hardware is compatible with w98se, this OS with sp2 and the other packs is the best choice for individual users.

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(just try to NOT have Windows media Player preselected everytime you insert a CD-r in the CD drive...)

IT's called AutoPlay settings, just go change them. You find them by right clicking on your CD drive in My Computer, choosing Properties and clicking the Autoplay tab.

Things are easy to configure in XP, while they may be different from 98 and 2000, the ywere changed to become easier to find (for new users). This is the reason behind most changes made in the Windows UI.

Also, there are a ton of mini XP tweaks right here on MSFN at

http://www.msfn.org/articles.php?action=cat&acid=26

Here's a guide that explains every service and if you should or shouldn't disable it (and what are the consequences).

http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/winxp_servi...ervices-3.shtml

Edited by Rhelic
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gee, Rhelic. eidenk isnt the only one that likes WinME. I like it too. I still am using an HP Pavilion computer I got back in early 2001 that handles ME nicely, even up to now.

note to siim04 about Firefox browser, upgrade to the LATEST version! I dont have any memory leaks with Firefox anymore with FF 1.07 when I use it on my WinME machine and on my brother's XP computer. If you still have memory leak problems, read this Windows Secrets article on how to fix the memory problems with Firefox:

http://windowssecrets.com/comp/041202/

Superlevel, does your computer support a true Pentium 3 or Pentium 4 CPU instead of the Intel Celeron CPU? my brother's XP machine (1.2 Ghz Intel P3 w/ 384 Mb of RAM, uses XP SP2 home ed.) runs pretty well. try installing a Intel Pentium 4 processor if your computer can support it.

Fredledingue has got a good point. Stick to the OS that you are most comfortable with, whether it is 98se, 2000, ME, XP or 2003.

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Celeron has always had a bad rap, the truth is, it's a good CPU, actually it's a great cpu for the price.

A 2.4ghz Celeron is NOT going to be any slower than a true P4 2.4ghz on 98/2000/XP. You might be able to measure a difference in games, and definitely there's a difference if you tried to use high end apps (maybe Photoshop, SQL server, etc).

Celeron has gotten a bad rap when only it's VERY FIRST iteration, the Celeron 300 was the only crappy one, and that was way back in 1998 iirc and was phased out after only 3-4 months. (Kind of like IBM, they make 1 bad batch of HDs and people think all their drives suck.)

IF XP seemed slow and you had 256ram, something else is at play, and it's definitely not the celeron, why don't you try to make sure all of your drivers (in XP) are the newest revisions.

Edited by Rhelic
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All I have to say about Windows Me is that it really isn't that bad. Just don't load a bunch of useless crap on it, and it should work fine. I have tested it on both VMware and on a Dell PIII and never saw a BSOD. Believe it or not, I have seen every windows os (that includes XP) crash, except ME (hell, I saw win2000 crash twice today, though that was due to a faulty cardbus driver on my laptop.) I'm actually considering testing it out on the computer I rebuilt recently to see how well it will run. I'm trying to dump XP off of my laptop and desktop because I ran into some, uhh, challanges with "Windows Genuine Advantage Validation" at windows update. It's crazy crap like that which makes me rush back to old software.

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I have tested it on both VMware and on a Dell PIII and never saw a BSOD. Believe it or not, I have seen every windows os (that includes XP) crash, except ME (hell, I saw win2000 crash twice today, though that was due to a faulty cardbus driver on my laptop.)

To BSOD WinME, do this : As soon as it is started. Run the Windows Mixer and move a volume slider on it. WinME should systematically BSOD. It is a known problem of WinME for which there is no hotfix. A workaround exist. It is running winamp first, after which you can use the mixer without BSOD. This problem showed up on the three successive hardware configurations I have been running ME on so far. I am not sure of course that it occurs with all hardware configs. Besides this, it is true that I barely ever see a BSOD.

When I first used ME I first considered reverting back to SE immediately so unstable and crashy it appeared to be. It's only after tweaking I became satisfied with it.

Also I don't believe running an OS for a short period of time in a virtual machine is a good way to assess its stability in general.

Which service pack have you got on Win2000 ?

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I just did a clean install of win2k on my laptop, that technically was built by HP for windows xp. It was apparently a defective PCMCIA cardbus driver. The BSOD was during the driver installation. I found a new driver on HP's site, downloaded it, installed it and all is well. What people have said about windows 2000 consuming more memory than xp is true, I figured that out this morning. Running barely anything on my win2k install, the memory usage was at 144, while on xp I believe it was about 111.

That's kind of a frustrating thing to hear about windows me with the mixer. You'd think that a problem that obvious would make MS relase a patch within seconds, but Me was released nearly 4 years ago!

I know I haven't had much experience with the OS, which is why I'm planning on installing Me on my rebuilt desktop, sometime in the near future. So far the only OS that I can declare completely "stable" on that computer is XP Pro.

Oh, and the win2k installation on my laptop has service pack 4.

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That's kind of a frustrating thing to hear about windows me with the mixer. You'd think that a problem that obvious would make MS relase a patch within seconds, but Me was released nearly 4 years ago!

Well, with a Batchrun script lauching and killing a copy of winamp 2.9 without plugins at startup I never see this BSOD.

As for not releasing patches there is another one that is even more frustratingly missing especially with regards to Win2000 which got released the same year. It is support for large hard drives. I believe Win2000 received support for large hard drives with SP3 . But they did not fixed it for ME to the best of my knowledge.

Edited by eidenk
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I ran into that hard drive problem when I built my brother's computer. Pretty stupid, but less frustrating than a BSOD everytime I change the volume.

Now is the time for celebration. I have just seen the very first BSOD on Windows Me!! Right after the ATI drivers installed, I rebooted, the screen hanged at the desktop, I pressed CTRL+ALT+DEL, and voila!! I must go and resolve this issue now.

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I'm not even talking about GAMES here, just apps.  Normally, I use Firefox, Trillian, iTunes, and (sometimes) Frontpage and Photoshop.  I was told that it was because of the Celeron and it's cheap build that killed my multitasking cpaabilities.

The problem is not amount of RAM. 384MB is enough to have winXP run decently.

The problem is not CPU speed. A 2.4GHz P4 is more than enough for winXP.

The problem is L2 cache, which that celeron has very little of.

What you have there is most likely a northwood core celeron. The willamette and northwood core celerons were notoriously s***ty because their L2 cache was chopped down to a measly 128KB, while full blown P4 parts had 256KB (willamette) and 512KB (northwood). In short, the L2 is just too small.

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Pretty stupid, but less frustrating than a BSOD everytime I change the volume.

It's only the first time after a fresh boot. Pressing any key usually makes the BSOD go and it is allright afterwards for the rest of the session.

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Believe it or not, I have seen every windows os (that includes XP) crash, except ME (hell, I saw win2000 crash twice today, though that was due to a faulty cardbus driver on my laptop.)

Oh I can believe this, imho Win2000 BSOD on me a few times back in the day, but far less than my experiences with 95 or 98.

Of course I also believe you have great drivers on your ME box and so-so drivers on your other setups. As I stated in a previous post, BSODs are often the result of your drivers not playing nicely with your system (and being triggered by something you or an app did).

Despite your experience with WinME, 2000 and newer are far more stable than the 9x kernel can ever be because of memory protection and such.

I can say from my experience it took well over a year of heavy usage before I ever got a BSOD on XP. I've found XP to be MS's most stable OS to date (ignoring DOS).

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Believe it or not, I have seen every windows os (that includes XP) crash, except ME (hell, I saw win2000 crash twice today, though that was due to a faulty cardbus driver on my laptop.)

Oh I can believe this, imho Win2000 BSOD on me a few times back in the day, but far less than my experiences with 95 or 98.

Of course I also believe you have great drivers on your ME box and so-so drivers on your other setups. As I stated in a previous post, BSODs are often the result of your drivers not playing nicely with your system (and being triggered by something you or an app did).

Despite your experience with WinME, 2000 and newer are far more stable than the 9x kernel can ever be because of memory protection and such.

I can say from my experience it took well over a year of heavy usage before I ever got a BSOD on XP. I've found XP to be MS's most stable OS to date (ignoring DOS).

WinXP is definitely stable with few or no crashes though it works best if you use it on new computers (whether laptop, desktop or server). Use XP on an old PC that is made from late last century and it'll be crappy. If your computer is made in 2001 or later, put W2k or WXP on it AND install the latest service pack for the OS (for Win2k it's SP4, for WinXP get SP2).

If you have driver-related problems with ANY version of Windows, check the manufacturers' web sites for updated drivers (VERY important to install the latest drivers for ALL your hardware). Also check for BIOS updates for your specific kind of computer you are using. Some BIOSes in older machines may need to be flashed (aka. updated via a software) for full XP compatibility.

Otherwise if your computer was made in Y2K or earlier, stick with 98se and install v2.02 of the 98SE pack. if you installed earlier versions of Gape's 98se pack, install the latest one over the previous version without having to remove the earlier one.

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#5 If you want to play legacy games you're better off with XP & DosBox than trying to get them to work in 98's DOS

#7 Network support in 98 is just so-so, this will really rear it's ugly head when we see ultra-broadband, as XP & 2000 will outperform 98 when you start exceeding the 3mbit limits DSL & Cable currently have.  (Ok I'm really splitting hairs here).

5. In my experience, using Win95, 98 + ME OSes [all versions] most DOS games "behave" better and/or more stable in native/true MS-DOS mode, without Windows GUI loaded, *if* specific game memory requirements [config.sys + autoexec.bat boot settings] are provided.

Windows GUI only adds a virtual environment which takes over, and which may not allow some old DOS games to use hardware resources [video, sound] properly/exclusively. Thus certain DOS games will crash most of the time when executed from within Windows, even using DOSbox or similar approach.

7. I am using Comcast cable [currently 4.8 Mbit/sec average, to be upgraded to 6.4 Mbit/sec next month] with both Win98 SE [+ 98SE2ME and all other updates + tweaks] and WinXP SP2 + all other updates and tweaked for performance [DrTCP optimal settings] + all unnecessary services disabled:

http://www.mdgx.com/xp.htm#WXP

NetMeter [freeware]:

http://www.mdgx.com/fw.htm#MNT

says that my download speeds are most of the time better when using 98SE.

I've tested all these configurations on 2 different PCs.

Hope this helps.

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