I gave Windows ME another try

Let us give Windows Millennium Edition another try! In this video I am using parts that I know work really well with Windows 98 SE, but we are installing Windows ME and I will share anything of interest with you. We have two awesome classic games today: System Shock 2 and Tachyon: The Fringe.

💙 Support Me 💙

Disclosure: Some links in this description are affiliate links. I receive a small commission when you make a purchase. There are no additional costs to you.

Buy games from GOG!

🛠 Resources 🛠

0:00 Introduction
0:21 Parts for Retro PC
2:45 Software and settings
3:17 Benchmarks
3:48 Resources and downloads
4:13 Playing System Shock 2
6:12 Headphones recommendation
10:24 Playing Tachyon: The Fringe
10:54 Joystick recommendation
13:24 Summary and thoughts

[goyban]

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.

[Pixelmusement]

Fun Fact: That closet you were hacking into at the start of System Shock 2 has a passcode of 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.

[MarcoGPUtuber]

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

[kurbeco]

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.

[J_Erik]

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.

[MarcosCodas]

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.

[GordosTacoShop]

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

[anton]

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.

[peterilling]

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.

[colinstu]

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.

[erikmerchant]

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.

[marquesdlr]

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!

[eugenioarpayoglou]

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.

[halenmartini]

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

[ukwan]

1995-2000 era of gaming interests me the most so Win98SE gives the perfect range of compatibility, X Wing, Wing Commander, Doom to Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament.. all under one OS.

[PlusisChicken]

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!

[XeonProductions]

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.

[AladimBR]

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!

[anthonydavis]

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.

[gnif]

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.