Windows Me

Windows Millennium Edition or commercially known as Windows Me, is a discontinued version of Microsoft Windows released on September 14, 2000 and developed by Microsoft for the home market of personal computers, designed to replace Windows 98. After the maturity already reached by its predecessors, Windows 95 and Windows 98, Windows Me was presented as an important evolution. It was the last operating system released in the Windows 9x series.

Despite all the improvements and new features introduced for the home user compared to Windows 98, Windows Me was highly criticized and unpopular for its continual bugs, excessive instabilities, and user experience issues. All these inconveniences caused its users to quickly return to the use of Windows 98 or feel compelled to use Windows 2000 or wait for the release of the new version of Windows that ended up being Windows XP.

Beginnings/history

In 2000, Microsoft released Windows Millennium Edition, which updated the Windows 98 kernel but would adopt some aspects of Windows 2000 and remove the option to Restart in MS-DOS mode. It also added a new feature called System Restore, which would allow the user to save and restore the computer's settings to an earlier date.

Windows ME was a quick one-year project to fill the gap between Windows 98 and the new Windows XP, which was reflected in the poor stability of this version. In theory, Windows 2000 was to be the unification between the two families of Windows, the business and the home, but due to delays this small advance was released. In this version the start of the system was accelerated and officially it was no longer possible to distinguish between MS-DOS and the graphical environment (although updates appeared that allowed them to be separated again as was done in previous versions).

This version had no 16-bit processors and focused solely on compatibility with new 32-bit hardware, so such a version only worked correctly with most new computers that had it installed, since if installed on an older computer (through a software upgrade), there the 16-bit hardware was a bit more complex to set up, or it stopped working.

Description

Windows Me, the successor to Windows 98 in the Windows 9x family and to Windows 2000 chronologically, was released as Home Edition when compared to Windows 2000, which had been released seven months earlier. It included Internet Explorer 5.5, Windows Media Player 7, and the Windows Movie Maker application, which is intended for video editing with various basic options and was designed to be highly user-friendly for home users. Microsoft also updated the graphical interface with some of the features that were first introduced in Windows 2000.

Windows Me is not built on the Windows NT kernel as it was only used in Microsoft's professional operating systems up to that point, unlike Windows XP which replaced Windows Me a year later. It is a family-based version of Windows 9x like its predecessors, but with MS-DOS running in real time but very restricted, in order to run faster during system boot.

Compared to other releases, Windows Me had a very short life cycle and was soon replaced by Windows XP, Microsoft's first desktop operating system for home users based on the Windows NT kernel, which was released on October 25. from 2001.

New and updated features in Windows Me

• Restore system: A tracking and reversion system, which was created to simplify the location and repair of faults. It was designed to work as a "security network" so that if the installation of an incompatible program or controller affects the stability of the system, the user can undo the installation and return to the system to a previous state. This is done by monitoring changes in system files and Windows registry (Restore system is not a backup program). Restore system can compromise stability if you choose to create a checkpoint of the system while a user is using it, and since your tracking method does not lose sight of the changes made, it is completely simple to restore a virus that the user had removed first.

• System File Protection: Previously introduced with Windows 2000 (such as Windows file protection), expanding the capabilities introduced with the System File Checker on Windows 98. The system file protection is intended to protect system files against modification and damage in a silent and transparent way to the user. When you are acting, in case a system file is replaced insecurely (Trojan Virus or malware action), Windows Restores the original copy immediately and silently. This copy is taken from a backup folder of the hard drive or directly from the Windows Me installation CD in case this copy is not found in any of the options sought by Windows. If there is no such disk in the drive, a dialog box alerts the user about the problem and asks the disk to be inserted. The same processes occur in case a system file is deleted. System File Protection is a different technology to Restore System and should not be confused with it. Restore System maintains a wide system of changing files including aggregate uses and user configuration data stored on several occasions on specific points created by the user, while Windows file protection protects files from the operating system without user performance.

• New TCP/IP options: Windows I include improvements in the configurations of Windows 2000 imported networks and architectures and a new implementation of the TCP/IP stack, which offer a more reliable and, above all, more stable operation.
• Support for the Universal Plug & Play: Windows Me is the second Microsoft operating system with MS-DOS-based core to introduce support for Universal Plug and Play (Connect and Use), after Windows 98 Second Edition.

• Acquisition of Windows Images: Windows I also introduced the introduction to the Windows API to the processing of images by providing a standardized and officially supported method to allow the version to communicate with the devices of image acquisition, such as digital cameras and scanners in a simpler and transparent way. Before Windows Me and the introduction of Windows Image Acquisition, non-standardized third-party solutions were frequently common, leading to incompatibility problems.
• Automatic updates: It allows you to download new revisions and critical updates for Windows with little interaction with the user. By default, set the update date once every 24 hours. Users can choose to download updates the day and time they want, even if priority updates should be downloaded and installed immediately.

• Compressed folders: Windows I include a folder encryption and folders compressed so-called compression utility, which was also integrated into the Microsoft Plus! package for Windows 98. With this feature, a user can create and access ZIP files. The user can also restrict access to files with a password using compressed folders. It is not factory installed, but can be added manually by entering "Add or remove programs", in the Control Panel.

• Games: With Windows I have included new games like: Backgammon on the Internet, Ladies on the Internet, Internet Hearts, Internet Reversi, Picas on the Internet, Solitary Spider and Pinball.

• Click on screen: Originally introduced with Windows 2000, it allows the input of characters using the mouse instead of the keyboard. It is useful for computers that use a pen as the primary pointer device.

• A new Help graphical interface and technical supportreplacing HTML Help-based Windows Help in Windows 2000 and 98. The aid center is based, and takes advantage of a technology called aid automation framework (SAF).

System Requirements

The minimum system requirements for Windows Millennium are:

• A Pentium processor or 150 megahertz compatible
• 320 megabytes of hard disk free space.
• At least 32 megabytes of RAM.

Microsoft's recommended system requirements are a Pentium II 300 megahertz with at least 96 megabytes of RAM. However, the Windows ME installation has the undocumented "/nm" parameter, which tells the installer to ignore the system requirements.

Criticism

Dan Tynan called it a "Mistake Edition" in the PC World article "Top 25 Worst Tech Products". He stated that Windows Me was the fourth "worst technology product of all time" due to various glitches and various bugs appearing there. "After Windows ME came out in late 2000," the article comments, "users had problems installing it, running it, getting it to work with other hardware or software, and even getting it to stop working."

Although this fact was less known, it was also said that the main origin of the problems of this system was that the minimum requirements indicated by Microsoft were not noticed by the users, forcing assemblers and many users to install it on machines originally designed for Windows 98, or more modern ones without sufficient resources (especially in memory), because there it needed a little more capacity than Windows 98 SE to make it work correctly, requiring somewhat more powerful equipment than it seemed at that time.