Win98 SE vs Win ME

[Harrisment]

Sure this topic has been brought up before. I'm just about done with my new machine and I'm trying to decide which os to put on it. I've heard different people tell me different things. Which is the best os for gaming? Will Win 95/98 drivers work on ME? (when loading sound/nic drivers that do not have me drivers)

 

[DAM]

from what ive read here, stick with 98se, dont venture into uncharted waters.






dam()

 

[Noriaki]

I say 98SE, I just posted this in another thread so I'll quote myself:

Quick answer to your question, WinME is a 9x kernel so 95/98 drivers will in most cases work fine.

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I have not tried WinME (at 98SE still) and probably will not. Several reasons:

1. My roommate did and it crashed about every 20 minutes, and he went back to win98SE the next day. We've since decided this was due to his crappy Ensoniq64 soundcard that is very driver picky. While I have an SBLive and probably wouldn't have this problem, I'm in no hurry to test my theory.

2. I hate Windows Media Player 7. 6.4 is much more to my liking.

3. I don't like having no native DOS Mode, in a DOS Box windows still has locks on some files and there are things you just can't do with windows running. The list is dwindling..but WinME still runs on top of DOS, there is no good reason to disallow native DOS mode, most people don't use it anyways.

4. System restore. Enough said.

5. My system doesn't get along with Win95, but it gets along nicely with Win98SE, it runs as stable as I expect 9x to run, and it works quite well. I'm happy at 98SE I figure why try my luck? You know the old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The main reason I don't upgrade to WinME is not exactly a good reason against the upgrade, but rather a lack of a good reason for the upgrade.

Just in general I don't like the way they remove alot of system level control, it's probably very good for joe-blow user, but it annoys me to no end. I like to have my own control over the system. And there is new bloaty software I don't need/want as well.
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[Theslowone]

I have used both and i would rather me, although i am using 2k now. Me has everything that 98 does with some bonuses. It has support for a long list of drivers that 98 does not have. When i installed it on my machine, i had my geforce drivers there ( they were sorry but there), network card, etc. They mainly support two manufactures that i have found that is nVidia and Creative labs. It does have some problems, but as for the media player it has the old one also. just right click on the program and go to run with and choose the old one from the list. After you do that it will work with all videos of that ext. I have heard of some problems with me and ie 5.5 but i never had them. As for crashing the ME i had crashed, hell windows sucks, but it wasnt as bad as 98. And if it does crash try reinstalling you might of had a bad installation.

And yes 98 drivers work fine on ME. Everyone i tried except detonator 3's by nvidia, but they screwed up with 98 also.

 

[RuNok]

I have to add my 2 cents. I have put together 3 new systems with Win ME and I must say it sucks. There is a problem with Win ME and memory and I have 256mb's of ram. Yet it it costantly comes up with ran out of memory. I see no reason for this since I have uninstalled, removed and disabled anything thats not important upon start up. No lock ups but some shutdown issues. Just not worth it yet. I say wait 5 months for Microsoft to make some serious updates. If you own Win 98se full go with it.(don't even second guess this) The only thing thats of any real good is that Win ME has Win 2000 tcp/ip stack. Which is good. But if you've had Win 98 for awhile I'm sure you know how to improve your internet connections. Good luck

 

[woodie1]

I tried to run ME on my system. I have a stable 98SE. I tried the update and fresh install with neither being any good. ME is the biggest memory hog I ever saw, there are some 98SE drivers that don't work on ME, Me is the biggest memory hog I ever saw, using DOS is a pain unless you boot with a 98 floppy, ME is the biggest memory hog I ever saw, IE5.5 was laggy, what a memory hog. If it ain't broke...

 

[RichardW]

I had a dual boot Win98SE /NT4 as games/work (in that order)

Alas the Win98SE had gone feral after buckets of games installs and general entropy problems.

I trashed NT4 and loaded 2000 from scratch on the NT disk and that is SWEET AS. It even does justice to most recent games.

The feral 98SE got so unstable in games that I decided to load WinME and give that a crack. First off, Me does not easily let you do a clean install, it insists on "upgrading" 98SE. This is not good since it then inherits most of the entropy problems with 98.
After some messing around, I had to go load W2K and trash the WinME directories and then reinstall Me from scratch.

Now I have a Me/W2k dual boot.

Problem is : A clean install of Me is no more stable than the crappy 98SE !!!!!

If I had not "timed out" my attention span I might consider going back to 98SE.

I have posted my WinMe errors in the Operating system forum - so far no one has been able to crack the problem.

Cheers,
RichardW



FYI Config is

EPOX 6VBA P3-500 128Mb
2 quantum drives - 17 (7200rpm) and a 14 (540rpm) (I seem to recall)
SB Live OEM
BT848 TV Tuner
AGP TNT2 32Mb
Acer 4432 CD Writer
19" Mon