I gave Windows ME another try 

I am a WinME fan as well, never had issue with it. Ofcource in those times I wanted to experience the latest technology and didn't care about lack of MSDOS. A big chunk of my childhood memories is with WinME anyways and it always gives me good vibe.

Fun Fact: That closet you were hacking into at the start of System Shock 2 has a passcode of 00000. I also prefer 800x600 in that game instead of 1024x768 because at 800x600 the vertical MFDs show up at the bottom corners instead of top corners, which I find more comfortable to read. Beyond that, the main reason I avoided ME since forever was not because it was "bad" but specifically because of the lack of proper DOS support.

I liked WinME back in the day, it did boot quickly. I didn't find it that unstable, I think the issue at the time was the removal of DOS modes.

Phil is celebrating the new millennium and has finally upgraded to MS DOS 8!

The first PC I had access to was an HP Windows ME computer. ME was pre installed and I never had any stability issues. I remember playing tons of great games on that computer. Dark Forces II, Half Life, Galactic Battlegrounds and of course Age of Empires. It was my grandmother’s computer and I remember going over every weekend in the summers to play games on it. She eventually gave me the computer a few years later, and I still have it to this day. I’m very nostalgic for Windows ME.

My first computer had windows ME. It was a gateway with 800mhz celeron. Played Diablo 2 and Baldurs gate like a champ.

I went from 95 to ME back in the day (after it was patched) and found it to be quite nice. My most vivid memory of Win98 was the never-disappearing “shutting down” window.

I like WinME. It was my first "desktop" OS (after father's corporate Win95-98 laptops) and I never had any issues with it on my P3-866/Geforce GTS2 rig.

512MB is plenty! I remember running XP regularly with 256, SOMETIMES 512 (at least in the early 00s up until 1-4gb was cheap). Remember using 98 with 64MB for awhile and eventually 128MB. And then Win2k at 384MB.It's funny how little ram we needed for so long.

Great video Phil ,used Windows ME in my İnternet Cafe in 2000 to 2001 .It had a great advantage. It was the first with system restore which was great for us İnternet Cafe owners .A solid platform ran all of my Voodoo series without any problems.

Very good video! Windows ME is a very good alternative to 98 nowadays to be used in retro hardware, as USB support is much better and you don't need any workaround to use HID devices such as mouse&keyboard or built-in support for USB sticks. Much faster than XP in machines like Pentium 3 (my favourite era) with most of 98se advantages if you enable DOS support!

WinME was Microsoft's attempt to hide DOS under a rock, but it was still there. Most of us back in the day dual booted Win98/Win2k. Win2k (NT) was a pure 32bit OS without the 16bit DOS, and also had multi-processor support (for those of us who owned a VP6, BP6 or similar). Win2k also had much better parallel port management. This can be demonstrated using a scanner, zipdrive and printer daisychained to the PP. If you try to use them at the same time on 98 it will most certainly crash. Win2k has no problem and data transfer in much faster on the zipdive. This may require changing the parallel port setting in the BIOS though.

thank you for making important resources far more accessible for us retro computing enthusiasts, phil!

I really love that you are rehabilitating computer parts and old OS that are a bit unloved. P4 and WinMe?? Get the pitchforks!! : ) Great video! Nice to see you also showing off joystick hardware... something that is not covered a lot here on YT. Might be a great video topic for the future comparing stick performance and software.

Oh, and I just signed up for patreon. You've helped so much with my hobby, and your website is an awesome resource .Thanks for your dedication to all things pc.

The Mistake Edition is back!

I remember the horrors of Windows ME back in the day, when the hardware was new and the OS was released it was so buggy that many offices and departments made it company policy to not allow Windows ME into their network. As repair technicians we had such a high return rate for broken and/or crashing Windows ME systems that our manager made it policy to just offer a downgrade to Windows 98SE for free, and it became policy for when selling new systems to discourage users from selecting Windows ME. It had nothing to do with dos or game compatibility, but rather production workloads like accounting or bookkeeping, even Microsoft Office was unstable on ME. If you were just gaming it wasn't too bad, but the productivity applications all suffered for it. Still to this day it sticks out in my mind as one of the worst releases of Windows Microsoft made, up there along side Windows Vista.

The first Windows PC my family had ran Windows ME. It was one of those Compaq Presario 5000 models with the purple plastic disc holder on the front of the case. It had a 1 GHz Pentium III but unfortunately had no AGP slot. It would have made a great Windows 98/ME gaming machine with a GPU upgrade if it did. It did play Command & Conquer/Red Alert/Red Alert 2, though, and that's all I cared about in the year 2001!

i really appreciate this vids, love the retro gaming scene and equivilant era tech

SS is an amazing game. Second the headphones recommendation. Sound in that game is so useful. Can hear things through walls and around corners. Save yourself from being prematurely discovered (if at all) or walking into a room unprepared. Most of my PC gaming started and was spent on WinME since that's what my machine came with (later qualified for a free XP upgrade due to timing) and I don't remember having too many of the issues people seem to associate with WinME other than the obfuscation of any DOS mode, which wasn't something I used much of anyway.

Windows Me was my favourite operating system back in the early 2000's, basically until XP was released. I had no idea why there was so much negativity around it back then, i loved it. I think it's starting to garner a more warm reception. Maybe some nostalgia involved there. Thanks for the review, i might build a Me retro pc myself and relive the 2000s again haha.

Never had any issues with Win ME back in the day. I was not playing DOS games anymore and didn't miss any lack of DOS boot capability. 2 years ago when I found your channel and started to revive my RetroPC stuff (had a couple of motherboards like ABIT SE6, Epox 8KA7, some Pentium 3 and Athlon XP CPUs, as well a Voodoo 3, Voodoo 5 and a Vortex 2 card there were stored in the last 20 years), I struggled a lit bit of how to setup things again. Had most files stored in CDs, but forgot completely the tips and tricks to make things work together. I also got some extra hardware during these 2 years (some Athlon64 and Slot 1 boards and CPUs, some ISA sound cards, etc) in order to have more choices and experimenting. I won't recall now which combination didn't work, one of my trial runs was not working on Windows 98Se (computer would crash after installing drivers), I tried Win ME and it worked out of the box, with same drivers. So yes Phil, you're right, do not discard choices like Win ME just because of reputation: you might be locking yourself out of a good choice that might work. On the Pentium 4 with Intel chipset... I grabbed some ECS motherboards (like P4VMM2) with VIA chipset for 2 reasons: it has universal AGP and it works with my Voodoos, whereas the Intel is AGP 1.5V only. The other thing is that VIA chipset works well with PCI sound cards like Yamaha YMF 7x4 and ESS1938 for native DOS sound. I'm bought one Intel P4 board from Aopen but unfortunately it was defective and I returned it to the seller - I could not verify its friendness with those PCI sound cards. Also thanks for the game suggestion, I will try Tachyon (only USD 1 today at GoG for me). It looks like a nice game. And don't forget to try Freespace 1&2 (avaiable on GoG also), nice missions, good history, massive capital ships.... you should check them out.... in my memory the best space combat game I played back on those days, before WinXp era. Cheers!

One theory I heard about Windows Me instability was mixing VXD and WDM drivers together. For the most stable possible theoretical Windows Me setup you need all WDM drivers. That being said I've never wanted to try Windows Me ever again because I still have flashbacks of it having BSOD's all the time before it eventually bricked itself by corrupting the file system beyond repair.

Great video Phil, the Win ME audio and visuals have always drawn me in and really have had very few problems when comes to hardware and or software compatibility/stability issues except with handful of exceptions.

I actually liked Windows ME much more than Windows 98SE. I had very little issues with it as compared to Windows 98SE. Windows ME was great for gaming. Then I got a coupon for a free upgrade to Windows XP Home from MicroCenter and it was just wow. I have good Memories of Windows ME. I did a clean install of it instead of an upgrade. That may have been the reason it was so stable for me. Great Video.

I never had any problem with WinME. At that time I was a computer science student. And I pushed my computer at the limit with Delphi, VB6, SQL Server, IIS...

I remember my experience with ME was on a Pentium 4 1.3 or 1.4ghz Willamette (can't remember which model exactly) with a measly 256MB of ram and a Riva TNT. XP ran like hot garbage but ME was so smooth it was actually insane. Though part of that was also my antivirus, for whatever reason it seemed to use significantly less CPU on ME.

I always kept quiet about ME, because the retro community loves to bash on it. But everytime I used it I had zero issues and ran much, much better than 98SE. Sometimes I like to think that Win98 is overrated.

Nice to see you showcasing SS2! That's got to be my favorite retro game and I've played through it many times.

This is great Phil. I'd love to see what you meant about restoring DOS mode. I stuck with 98 back in the day well into the XP era, because of the ME horror stories.

I had no problems with ME back in the day. I did turn off the restore feature which noticeably slowed the computer down. I also removed the massive amount of bloatware and trial software that many computers had in that time period. It also helped that my ME was OEM to the computer which means I didn't have driver issues that the people installing ME may of had.

I grew up with Windows 3.1 and 95 but the first computer for my room and that I tore apart was a Dell Dimension 4100 P3 933 MHz with Windows Me. I still have it and i recently put an SSD in it and reloaded Me. It runs great! Let me tell you having native USB Support is such a massive time saver!

Never had problems with Win ME ;) Great vid, Phil! Loved it! Great memories!

Wow, I had forgotten about Tachyon, this used to be one of my favorite games, thanks for the reminder and thank you for your videos, they are great fun and have encouraged me to build myself and my daughter Retro PCs (Win XP - Athlon 64 x2 based).

I was a tech at a computer store when ME came out. Those were the days when most computers people bought were build in small computer stores like where I worked. Even after ME came out almost every customer still wanted Windows 98 because they were told horror stories. The only issue I recall running into was with some older hardware not having drivers that worked well with ME. I myself was a Windows 98 holdout. Not because I didn't like ME, but because I still played DOS games and absolutely loved Windows 98 SE. Thanks for the entertaining video!

Thanks for reinvigorating the ME interest Phil - I have a Pentium 4 project sitting in storage that would benefit from a Windows ME build. 💿

Great video! I kind of miss messing around with Windows ME.

Danke, Phil! Once I get myself a desk and such for my apartment bedroom, I wanna make a video on my Shuttle XPC SB62G v2 thanks to you.

Everybody seems to complain about Win Me.... i used it back in the day on my Asus P2B with a P2 233. Completely stable for me. I really loved Win Me until XP came around (yes i ran win XP on a pentium 2 233)

The reason the WDM drivers support CD audio in a virtual machine is because the operating system directly reads the audio tracks and plays them in software.

Excellent! In Russia Windows ME in joke was named Windows Linoleum and it was not so popular as Windows 98SE, but a bootspeed and Win2K liked interface were very impressive. Sorry my English, please.

17:50 exactly my point. Why Windows Me if 98 SE does almost everything Me does but not hinder you to either exit to DOS or start in DOS and there is no software that I'm aware of that runs under Me but not under 98.

My ;ME machine was one of my favorites so I have a strong bias. Well done. This would have been a killer ME build back in the day.

Brings back memories of me watching my older brother play AVP 2.

Thank you Phil. I was waiting for you to try to use WinME again. With the MS-DOS mod, you'll have the best of Windows stability (sans internet browsing, just reboot) and all the safety features that are standard equipment now. THANK YOU!!! I kept trying to tell people WinME got a bad rap around the Capacitor Plague era. If it wasn't for that, it would likely have lasted a bit longer even though WinNT was the future..

Great video, I use ME on my Dell Inspiron 8100 as it has more stable USB support than 98SE plus the sound card doesn't support true DOS mode anyways. It also does give better performance on late Pentium 3 / early Pentium 4 systems when compared to 2000/XP! Only thing I will say is to disable system restore as it never worked properly under ME and just wastes disk space.

With me I have seen Windows ME as a mixed bag because it all depends on the hardware that you had installed inside of your PC. My dad had a Sony VIAO mini laptop that had Windows Me on it and it ran like absolute garbage that sucker blue screened every chance it had but once he upgraded to Windows 2000 that machine became so much better. My two friends had PIII 500mhz machines both running Windows Me and both machines ran it just fine. With me I tried Windows Me for about 30 seconds because of the lack of DOS support so I went back to Windows 98 SE.

I used Windows ME many times even on laptops and I don't had any problems with that OS. I only had little problem when it installed WDM driver for soundcard at ThinkPad T20 instead VXD one that was more suitable for DOS games there, but I was able to install VXD driver for soundcard without problem.

Imo games back in the days didn’t have the same visual immersion as today so developers put so much more emphasis on sound. I wish that modern games put more time on sound quality for immersion.

I went from win95 to ME back in the day. Shortly after I also got a w2k machine for running business applications... that was a very stable machine which I absolutely loved. Over time I found myself running more and more of my games on that w2k machine, and the ME PC fell by the wayside. Not because I was unhappy with ME, but because the w2k PC ran all my new games and work applications flawlessly. ME just became redundant over time. I found w2k to be so good in fact, I held onto it as long as I could. Ended up skipping xp and went straight to win7 when forced to upgrade... :)

On a solid system ME works well. Low overhead on circa 2000 gaming. My hardware is on either side of this era, i have a solid 98 system and a solid XP system.

always preferred ME to 98. seemed to work better on every system I install on, plus some quality of life features that we take for granted.

Phil, you are awesome, retro gaming is the best gaming right now. I never played System Shock 2 back then but I remember it was praised for it atmosFEAR. I think System Shock 2 was the inspiration for creating Half-Life. Transferring save files from project to project and showing more of the games is the way to go, thank you!

My MX440 128bit has become my go-to W98 card because "it just works" and is very compatible in DOS. I actually threw it out in the trash when I first got it as part of a local PC pick up but then decided to keep it and it still works fine about 5 years later despite literally zero love and care lol

Millenium was the OS of my first ever PC. Me is a blast, IF you have the right hardware, and install the correct drivers :) I myself had a Matsonic mobo, with KT266, the ones with SDR and DDR support...installing the VIA 4-1 drivers always resulted in the system entering Safe Mode when booting.

I really enjoyed playing the co-op patch for system shock 2. I'll probably do it again with my son when he's older!

I use ME on any pc above 600mhz and used for mostly windows games. Go for 128mb+ ram to remove OS use from virtual ram/Swap

About the WinME and the driver for the USB storage: that driver will also work on Win98.

WinMe has become my go-to test OS for retro hardware (even if the machine will ultimately run something else). I don't always use an SSD in an adapter that I can easily plug into my main PC, so the out of the box USB storage support and more robust network stack compared to 98 are invaluable features. It's also proven to be remarkably forgiving when using the same install on another computer; for the most part its just boots, finds some built-in drivers, and works.

My first new computer the purple compaq came with windows me so I'm fond of me. I have a cool oem sony computer that I upgraded from 700mhz piii to 1.4 ghz piii. I found a sony oem recovery on archive that actually installed and is windows me, came with original bloat and even store demos!

Zalman made a true 5.1 surround sound headphone during this era - I still have one, and other than my own damaged hearing, they’re still great! They’re strange looking, most definitely, but they’re somewhat collapsible and has an insanely long cord with three jacks for your sound card. Hope you can find a set, they’re quite nice especially given their age.

Wow, you reminded me of my late childhood, the GF 4 MX440 was my first video card

Thanks for this video. I'm getting ready to use Win2k on a video with a dual PIII system. I've never tried it.

My first machine came with Windows 98, but one day in 2001 the hard drive failed. (Presumably.) Dad took it to the local independent computer shop, and it came back with ME. A couple of the shareware games I liked to play didn't work properly, but everything else did once reinstalled. I suspect it worked fine because it was a clean install and the shop knew which drivers would avoid issues. As a young'un I didn't know how to use DOS mode anyway. "Lucky" for me, I got to experience the horror stories about driver incompatibility with Vista 5 or 6 years later. It was a machine which came preinstalled with it, but it somehow still had issues, and plugging in a printer designed for XP made the whole system crash. I installed XP on that laptop within a couple months.

Not having any crash on win me is a monumental achievement honestly.

I absolutely loved WinMe, and still nowadays I keep it in a Virtual Machine. I liked the stability, the look and the fact that finally I didn't have to format my PC once a month (being lucky) with Win98. I ever kept in a dual boot system with WinXP for an year, using both, without ANY issue. The peak of Win9x family for me.

Thanks for this video.

There are some interesting things that Windows ME does with DOS memory management which aren't well advertised. I've seen some other youtubers "restore" DOS mode and becausue of the changes to memory management you don't quite need to fuss as much with freeing up Conventional memory. At least that's what it looked like. That youtuber didn't play any games though. You might consider looking into that.

I think is an excellent decision to resume from saves, when you can, for the games you show. It gives the sensation of continuation, and for you may result more engaging and entertaining while you are producing your great videos!

I don't have much experience with this OS but when I did, it was back in the day, don't recall any real issues 😊

98SE2ME can apply some of the eye candy from WinME such as bringing the Explorer shell to 98SE. The internet games option is bugged, but the servers no longer work anyways. Some of the system files introduce bugs that don't exist in the 98SE equivalents, but also resolves bugs from older 98SE system files at the same time. Apparently WinME includes the Win2K TCP/IP stack that is left out in 98SE2ME. MDGx has update packs for WinME but they were not as well supported as the U98SESP. I stick with 98SE on any retro PCs as it's quick and easy to install and update while having the flexibility to go into DOS.

I love this!

The Audigy2ZS is such a great piece of hardware, I still use mine to this day (bought a PCI to PCI-E bridge just for that), with the unofficial "kX" drivers, it offers possibilities in terms of audio routing and processing in real time that only very high end modern solutions could realistically rival with. It's an amazing card, though it's 96KHz/24bits capabilities are kinda limited.

Back then I had a pre-build with Windows Me, it was a Pentium 3 with 750MHz, 768MB RAM, graphics card I can't remember. It worked for me without any problems and, to be honest, I found Windows Me totally okay

It's a great system to use on notebooks. I have it installed on a Toshiba A10, it was a complicated installation, I had a lot of blue screens and crashes but I managed to eliminate them. Use for Windows games and compatible DOS games under the Windows environment. It is also useful for C programming using VIM on DOS or an IDE on Windows, and Mysql. On desktop hardware and with ISA cards, Windows 98 remains unbeatable.

i used ME for years and was very happy with it. You can play most dos games in windows just by clicking on them. If you really want pure DOS mode you can get it, but you don't need it the vast majority of the time.

Happy Friday Phil!

I am curious to try Windows ME, after seeing this video and LGR's review/retrospective of it. I only remember one person using Windows ME back in the day, but I wasn't aware of it's terrible reputation at the time XD.

Windows Me was my daily driver in the early 2000s, and I fortunately didn't have a lot of stability issues compared to Windows 98 SE. The only real drawback was the removal of the Restart in MS-DOS mode option. I was a bit confused by the OS-tan Windows Me memes, but I guess a lot of people had trouble with it back in the day.

Nice I had the Audigy 2 ZS in my first gaming PC. Athlon 2500+, NF7-S, 9700Pro, 1GB DDR400 inside an Antec 1080AMG. Wish I still had it today :(

Nice to see the os getting some appreciation. It is what it is. Ahead of its time, and thus hardware of the day steuggled to cope. Vista had the same problem. Niwadays though with cherry picked hardware both can be rock solid stable.

I remember the bad reviews when windows me came out so skipped it.. I may have to try it out now. Thanks for the game reviews..

Another nice video as usual, What is the brand/model headphone you're show in the video ?

I had no issue with my Pentium II 300mhz and an Intel RC440BX mATX board. Though mine had a de-soldered ISA slot.

I bought Sytrm Shock 2 back in the day. THE creepiest soundtrack I have ever heard. Movies included. A lesson in sound design. That back ground hum still makes my nerves go on edge. Thanks. I am curious as to what sort of costs you incurred in building this.

I have 5 pc. First with Win98 with Voodoo 3 + pentium 3 800 mhz for glide games and dos games. Second pc with Win ME for games which runs only on Win9x but with Radeon 9600 Pro + Pentium 4 2.4 for better performance and antialiasing + anisotropic filter option.

I personally liked windows me back in the day. The only issues i really came across was with the recovery program built in i just turned it off to get the best performance at the time the few times i used recovery always failed anyways with restoring the previous states. Besides recovery it was a solid os. There was a way to get dos running but its been a long time i remember copying files over from other dos versions.

Amazing graphic card! I has the 32mb version on my old Pentium 4 ,1.70ghz ! Good old times!

After watching this review, I tried the GOG version of System Shock 2... however I ended up installing it on my XP retro machine instead. It allows me to run it at 1920x1200 on a 32inch widescreen monitor... and it looks stunning. :) I got to say, I think this is better served as an XP game than a 98/Me title.

Nice video. I love Windows Millennium, because first PC of my OWN (not hole family) arrived with this OS pre installed. Phil I have storage bug with Audigy 2 and VDM driver. One game is freezing on exit Aliens vs Predator 2 (2001). No such thing on XP. If I use VxD game exiting correctly, but I’m loosing cd audio music in older games

I used ME for a while back in the day, right up until Microsoft's Rise of Legends game came out and required Windows XP. Spent the first few hours of a LAN party upgrading everyone's PC so we could all play that game lol.

Windows ME caused me kidney failure, my spleen to rupture, liver damage and caused an extreme rise in my blood pressure. It was not very good for me. But I'm all better now!

Nice content as usual. Windows ME is not that bad despite what others have said in the past, compatibility is good some don't work as well some do. My setup is a Asus P4B800-se with a Asus P4>Pentium M adaptor cpu @ 2.1ghz also 512M SSD memory GeForce GTS abit overkill, onboard sound, MS Sidewinder Force Feedback or Thrustmaster Top Gun USB. Nothing beats running with real hardware, GOG is good but when you have real why not? Thanks Phil for more content

I'm using WinME with my Core 2 Duo 8500 system and it works great!

tHAT Audigy was like my fav sound card for near a decade :)

I loved Windows ME. My favourite version of all time.

I was turned onto win2k by a friend back then so I ended up skipping WinME back then but I do like that it used the 2k color scheme and of course was better at DOS games.

I put WinME on a single Pentium Pro 200mhz 256k. Was very pleasantly surprised. Hardly any issues.

I honestly only use me for 98 era PCs I install a dos patch and it fixes all the dos problems, for me at least me has less issues and less crashes for me on older hardware, it also works a bit better on newer hardware too! Like pentium m era, something else that helps are the updates which if you haven’t seen someone has brought back the update servers For 9x, it’s called windows update restored!

I used WinME for a couple of years (before installing XP) on my 850MHz socket A Athlon back in the day and really liked it. Never understood the hate...