Windows ME Gripes

Windows ME is short for Windows Millennium Edition.
Windows ME is Windows 98 Third Edition.

I have no personal experience using Windows ME.

Taking the Pain out of ME By Matt Hartley May 27, 2004

Is Windows Me worth it? Save your money or demand Windows 98 instead By Al Fasoldt Sept. 17, 2000

Scot Finnie newsletter of June 6, 2002. Quoting: "In case you haven't noticed, Microsoft has effectively abandoned Windows Me, which wasn't well received by the press (including yours truly). It probably should be releasing a Windows Me service pack, but it isn't."

The Langa List newsletter of March 18, 2002 by Fred Langa. Quoting: "Windows Millennium Edition was and is perhaps the worst version of Windows in over a decade: It should have been at most a free update to Windows98SE, but instead, Microsoft gussied it up and shoved it out the door as if it were an entirely new version of Windows. The only reason I can see for doing this is that Microsoft needed to release something new to keep the cash flow going. Lacking a real product, they foisted a half-baked Windows ME on the world."

Windows ME may suffer from a serious security bug. eEye has issued a security advisory with the full details and there is a Microsoft bulletin. December 21, 2001.

Passport is cracked. By Brian Livingston in InfoWorld magazine. September 10, 2001. Microsoft's Passport authentication program, which is used by tens of millions of people to log on to Hotmail accounts every day, is trivially easy for a Trojan horse to compromise on Windows 9x and Me systems. A breach can expose a user's financial information, including credit card numbers that were typed in by a user and stored on Passport's central Web server. The author also wrote a follow-up article. This problem is distinct from the other problems with Passport, such as those identified in a white paper by researchers at AT&T Labs (see www.avirubin.com/passport.html). To name only one, redirection of browsers to Microsoft's Passport server is not protected by SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). This makes it easy for an ISP employee to intercept account numbers. The specific flaw is that Windows 9x and Windows Me allow any application to "see" the user name, password, and phone number used to access a dial-up ISP. Windows NT, 2000, and XP guard against this. Microsoft knew about this problem with Windows 9x and Windows Me and chose not issue a fix for it. With e-mail viruses and worms planting silent Trojan horse programs on millions of PCs, all the data a rogue programmer needs is out in the open.

Microsoft Admits WinME Memory Problems. Langa List newsletter July 26, 2001. Quoting: "...it appears that WinME actually has regressed to a point where it's worse than earlier versions of Windows. ("Flagship." Hmmph!) In this area, as in so many others, Win98SE is a much better home/end-user choice; and Win2K a much better business-oriented choice...But my best advice still remains: Avoid WinME if you can. It's a dog."

Windows Magazine says DO NOT USE WINDOWS ME. March 9, 2001. Quoting from the article "After several months of real-world experience with Windows Me, Winmag.com now recommends against choosing it. We even recommend against buying a new PC with Windows Me pre-installed." This is stunning, coming from Windows Magazine. Note: as of March 26, 2001, the Windows Magazine web site has died. This was the old URL.

Windows ME Annoyances book. March 2001. The title says it all.

Bugs of the Millennium by John Woram, formerly of Windows Magazine, reports on bugs he found in WinMe.

Stephen H. Wildstrom in the April 2, 2001 issue of Business Week Magazine said that when it comes to handling multiple network configurations, such as for a home and office, Windows ME is less capable than Windows 98. In the same article (Buying a New PC? Not So Fast on page 26) he suggests not buying a new computer with Windows ME pre-installed. Instead he says to wait until the end of 2001 when Microsoft is scheduled to release Windows XP and buy a computer with WinXP pre-installed. In the October 22, 2001 issue of Business Week Magazine Mr. Wildstrom referred to Windows ME as "awful".

Windows Me: Problems for You? Help for beleaguered Windows Me users March 16, 2001. PC World Magazine. Stuart J. Johnston. Quoting from the article: "Is Windows Millennium Edition driving you crazy? You're not alone. We've received a ton of complaints recently about all kinds of Me woes ... installation nightmares, subsequent software and hardware incompatibilities, and good old system crashes. On top of all that, some users can't get Me to shut down properly ... you may have trouble using Windows' disk defragmenter or simply restarting your computer. Or your browser may have difficulties displaying Web pages." Included in the article are five different links to pages in the Microsoft web site to help you deal with these assorted problems.

10 Ways to Make Windows Me Run Better Fred Langa Windows Magazine March 3, 2001. The title does not make it sound like a gripe article and most of it is not. However, the 10th way to improve the performance of Windows ME is to run Windows 98 Second Edition instead. Mr. Langa ran controlled tests and found that no matter what he did in terms of performance tweaks, Windows 98 SE was faster. Quoting from the article "WinMe is a usable but unspectacular OS ... if you have a choice, I suggest you either avoid WinMe altogether -- or revert to Win98SE."

Some Windows Me tips and tricks InfoWorld magazine. February 5, 2001. Brian Livingston. The article notes that the Hibernate feature in WinMe has many quirks. Quoting: "Windows Me's System Configuration utility always reports that Hibernate and Standby are enabled, even if they're disabled or your machine doesn't have support for these modes."

Fatal Exception 03H Problem when using Cybermedia's Oil Change, Uninstaller version 5 and earlier, Guard Dog version 2.5 and earlier, First Aid 97, 98 and 2000, McAfee Utilities 3.0, McAfee Office version 2 or McAfee Office 2000 (version 3.0). From the Langa List newsletter of December 7, 2000.

Bug Using AOL
November 30, 2000. The New York Times. If you are having problems staying connected to AOL or if your computer freezes up 10 or 15 minutes after connecting to AOL, it could be a Windows ME driver bug. There is a software patch but it is currently (11/30/2000) in beta. The Microsoft Knowledge Base article on this is Q272016.
This same bug was discussed in the Washington Post on December 7, 2000. The article said: "...a Microsoft product manager for Windows ME, confirmed that computers running Windows ME conflict with AOL if the computers' modems have software drivers installed called "Windows Driver Model (WDM)." (Microsoft has published a downloadable software fix for this problem at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q272/0/16.asp.). " The Microsoft person also said that other compatibility issues have arisen with AOL's software.

Windows ME Resurrects Viruses
November 9, 2000. A reader of the Langa List newsletter found found that Windows ME's automatic system-file restore process made it very hard to remove a worm from his system using Norton AntiVirus 2000.
This problem was also discussed in PC World magazine December 19, 2000, in the February 2001 issue. There it notes that the problem effects both NAV 2000 and NAV 2001. The Windows ME system restore facility creates a directory that Norton Anti-Virus can not read, thus preventing it from removing viruses there. This article has links to Microsoft and Symantec documentation on this problem.

4 Windows Millennium Horrors and How to Scare Them Off. CNet. November 9, 2000. By Gregg Keizer. They collected reader complaints, chose the four most horrifying of the bunch and hunted down ways to fix or avoid the problems. The first topic is how to dump the OS and return back to Windows 98.

Verizon says don't look at Me
InfoWorld magazine, October 9, 2000 issue by Robert X. Cringely. The Verizon DSL service does not support Windows Me. The company expects to add support for WinMe in three to six months.

Windows Insider
September 21, 2000. Scott Finnie. Windows Magazine. This issue of the newsletter has gripes on doing a clean installation of Windows ME. Quoting "this is a much harder clean install than either Win98 or Win98SE was". Also the issue of the newsletter notes that Norton System Works 2000 does not support WinMe. The author upgraded to System Works 20001 but found that it broke his Eudora email program (version 5).
FYI: This issue says there is a $50 Win98-only upgrade CD and a $90 Win95 or Win98 upgrade CD. Both can do clean installs in addition to upgrade installs.

Data Loss Threatens Fast Windows Systems
PC World Magazine. September 21, 2000. Systems running at 933 MHz and faster with Windows 98 or Me risk data
loss at shutdown because they power down before the contents of the disk drive cache has been written to disk. In other words, the system shuts down before the OS can save what you were working on. The problem does not occur on computers running Windows 2000. Microsoft will release a fix for this, however the fix will only be built into copies of the OS loaded on new systems. Microsoft is not releasing the fix to the public. A double whammy.

System Restore Needs a Few Good Tweaks
InfoWorld Magazine. September 22, 2000. Brian Livingston. This article makes the new System Restore feature in Windows ME look like a beta release. It requires a minimum of 200 megs of disk space, but defaults to much more. This space is not put to good use according to the article. Quoting: "System Restore affects only Windows files and third-party programs you install under Me. Neither the My Documents folder nor any documents with registered extensions are covered. So users may get a false sense of security..." The article also discusses problems with the scheduling of these backups, it takes them too often and there is no way to configure how often it makes backups. To deal with this, Mr. Livingston suggests turning off the System Restore feature, but warns that doing so destroys all the good backups you have already made. The article offers a tweak around this.
A separate gripe with Windows ME is also mentioned in this article. The OK button does not always do what it used to do. There are some places within WinMe where you must click on the APPLY button to save your changes. Other places within WinMe let you save your changes with the OK button, just like Win95 and Win98.

Windows Me Demands App Upgrades
PC World Magazine September 20, 2000. Not all Windows 98 software runs properly on WinMe, particularly AntiVirus and personal firewall programs. Among the Windows 98 programs that Microsoft says have had problems with WinMe are personal security tools such as Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2000, Norton Personal Firewall 2000, Network ICE's BlackICE Defender, and Network Associates McAfee PGP Personal Privacy.

Windows Me isn't Microsoft's' shining hour
ZDnet. By David Coursey, September 20, 2000. Quoting from the article: "Like so many other suckers, I purchased Windows Millennium Edition last week and spent the weekend installing it. I can save you reading the rest of this column by offering a single word of advice: Don't." The author installed WinMe three times. One went well, one had minor problems and one was "the install from hell." The article says there is very little in WinMe in terms of new features. The author calls it "an example of how little Microsoft thinks it can put in a box and people will still be willing to buy it."

How to stay out of trouble with the new Windows upgrade
Info World Magazine. September 15, 2000. Brian Livingston. Assuming you opt not to follow the advice in the articles listed above, this article offers advice on how to upgrade a Windows 98 computer to Windows ME. It notes that some programs are required to be uninstalled from your computer before upgrading to Windows ME.

Reports of Windows Me bugs already rolling in
CNET News.com. September 13, 2000. Bug reports for Windows Me started before the operating system hit retail shelves. Hackers can crash a Windows Me computer running WebTV software by sending the computer a certain type of data over the Internet.

Millennium OS upgrade not worth the risk
By Mike Langberg. The San Jose Mercury News. September 9, 2000. Quoting from the article: "Upgrading the operating system of a Windows personal computer is somewhat like ripping a house off its foundation and moving the structure to a new one that is almost -- but not quite -- the same size. The relocated house sits uneasily on this new foundation. You can still live there, but you never know when a wrong step will drop you through the floorboards. Windows Millennium Edition ... doesn't offer enough added features to justify the risk of remodeling your PC..." The article goes on to note that a full install of WinMe consumes 500 to 600 megabytes of disk space (nearly double Windows 98) and like many other articles listed below documents problems the author experienced in upgrading a computer from Windows 98 to WinMe.

Microsoft Introduces A Very Unambitious 'Windows Me' Upgrade
By Walter Mossberg. The Wall Street Journal. September 7, 2000. This article is 90% negative about Windows Me. Mr. Mossberg calls in "no big deal" and advises "not to get excited about it". He upgraded two computers from Windows 98 to Windows Me and summarized his experiences with "it caused more problems than it solved." Among the problems he experienced are Internet software such as AOL that no longer worked, personal firewall programs that no longer worked, audio problems, and an endless loop. On the question of whether someone running Windows currently should upgrade to Windows ME (for $60) Mr. Mossberg says "No way."

Woe Is Me
By Stephen Manes. Forbes Magazine. August 21, 2000 issue. I most enjoyed reading this article where Mr. Manes skewers the Operating System as only he can. He calls the operating system "Minimally Enhanced" and refers to the new features as "half-baked knockoffs". He tested a feature designed to protect essential OS files from danger, but it didn't and he had to re-install the Operating System. He notes that there are many compatibility problems with existing software and that reviewers have had trouble installing Windows ME. Should you even buy a new computer that comes with Window ME pre-installed? Read the article - it is griping at its best.

Is This Upgrade Necessary?
Michael Miller September 1, 2000 issue of PC Magazine. This is a balanced article, pointing out the pros and cons of Windows ME. He advises that on an existing machine that is working well, don't upgrade to Windows ME. Among the cons Mr. Miller cites are that the system requires more computing horsepower, may have incompatibility problems with old software, and changes in networking that are likely to also cause incompatibility problems.

Windows Magazine reviewed Windows Me on August 8, 2000. The review included a section called Things We Don't Like About Windows Me. On the question of upgrading to Windows ME, they conclude: If you've got a well-tuned Win98 setup on an existing system, we can think of no compelling reason to rock the boat. Hey, but isn't Windows Me supposed to be more reliable than the earlier versions of Windows 9x? They say: nothing we've seen so far has convinced us that WinMe is any more reliable than any other version of Win9x.

Windows Me: Not Worth the Trouble
Business Week magazine, July 31, 2000 issue, the Technology and You column by Stephen H.Wildstrom.
Microsoft's latest OS for consumers doesn't justify the hassle of installation. Quoting: An assortment of applications that are available separately doesn't offer much justification for the pain of installing an operating-system upgrade.

The Digital Duo was not kind to Windows Me. Quoting from their review "Windows 98 at least added support for things like USB ports. This adds not much of anything, and in the early going it has been notoriously flaky. If it comes on your computer, fine, good luck. If you're planning to upgrade, go lie down and say to yourself "Not Me! Not me!" until the urge passes."

FYI: Microsoft has a web page on their tech support site called the Windows 98 and Windows Me Error Message Resource Center where they explain common error messages. They also invite you to send in an error message so they can research it.

Page last updated: May 27, 2004