A Micro$oft First - An OS that actually works.

[KermitTheFrag]

Someone gave me a (genuine) copy of WinME because they just got Windows 2000.

Is this the first product MS have knocked out that isnt severely broken? I installed it on Friday and I havent had one crash or glitch. What happened - did they fire all their coders or something? It's actually more stable than Win2k on my system (yeah seriously!!).

This is shocking!!!! I will have to drink me some more vodka to see if it's just reality catching up...

[brainbomb]

Give it time, and you'll see that you are mistaken.
I uninstalled WinME the same day I bought it. Never did take it back to the shop tho. Doh!
A tip on 2000, don't install it in NTFS. All sorts of nastiness occurs. Fat32 is fine tho. I can leave my PC on for days on end with no probs - No reboots cos the OS doesn't suck away all of my RAM. Win2k seems to clear RAM much better.

I'm actually seriously considering a return to Win95 on my Athlon 800. It should go like a rocket. maybe 3.11? no thats silly.

[WhiteKnight]

Try Win98Lite

similar but faster than win95... and slightly less buggy..

i think its at win98lite.com..

its just a patch tath reduces win98 to its most minimal install.. minus stuff that you cant normally uninstall.

[KermitTheFrag]

Yeah I used 98lite (http://www.98lite.net/) to remove movie maker, media player and PC Health. I still havent had a crash yet!!! I've rextracted Media Player 6 from Win98 media and am using that. Solid as anything. Mind you I am using Genuine Intel Hardware (board+processor+approved RAM), so that might be something to do with it.

This is actually starting to look more reliable than when I had SuSE Linux 7.1 on it (now that would be a miracle).

MS - Well done so far. If it crashes though. I want Billy G's head on a plate with an apple stuck in his gob.

[Cabe]

what kind of apple, Breaburn, Granny Smith, or Lisa?

[KermitTheFrag]

A macintosh! :D

[addendum: make that a G4 - the damn lisa would keep falling out]

[Cabe]

:D

[Phiebs]

I have used both 98lite and 2k, and I feel that overall 2k is better because it is JUST as stable and has more features and better networking than 98.

My little rant.

:angel:

[KermitTheFrag]

Been there, got the T-Shirt!

Win2k is *very* stable, but it's dog slow on anything DirectX based. I mean for example top fps rates:-

Unreal Tournament Win2k Nvidia 6.50 @ 1024x768x16 = 60fps
Unreal Tournament Win98 Nvidia 6.50 @ 1024x768x16 = 120fps
Unreal Tournament WinME Nvidia 6.50 @ 1024x768x16 = 122fps

These are `Kermit Visual Averages'. Nothing technical. This is probably memory protection on Win2k doing something but it still sucks!

My conclusion is that Win9x/ME only breaks if you put it near one of those `network' things that it doesnt like.

[Phiebs]

I can go along with that, but I havn't found SUCH a drop in fps as that...Thats 50% of WinME's - I have had ME - but i changed over to 2k and didn't notice that much of a drop. Are you using DX8 on your 2k box? I probably went from around 120 in me to about 110 on 2k? Mayby I'm just lucky??

:smokin:

[Jazza]

Horrah, someone else who likes WinME :)

ppl I've met who don't like ME, had upgraded from Win98, and not clean installed it, which was giving them grief.

I've been using it since it came out, have haven't had a single problem with it. Friends who have had problems, fixed it with new drivers, as ME seems to break older drivers :(

I'd like to install Win2k, just need to be able to get those FPS up. Maybe XP will fix that :)

[KermitTheFrag]

This week I have been amostly running DirectX 8.0a and Nvidia Ref drivers 6.50 and 7.58.

7.58 gives fastest pure DirectX8
6.50 gives fastest pure DirectX7

UT runs fastest on DX7.0a and 6.50.
Tribes 2 runs fastest on DX8.0a and 7.58

As for ME, as Jazza2 says - you have to clean install it to make it work. Upgrades are suicidal on *any* Microsoft OS! You gotta be frucking mad to even think about running an upgrade.

The frame rate drop on Win2k on mine varies quite a bit depending on which Intel i815 chipset drivers I use. This chipset sucks biggo, so it could be having trouble with Win2k. WinME is a *lot* faster, and the i815 AGP bridge driver may be more mature and it was included with the OS so it was obviously Microsoft approved.

Anyone else got a system similar to mine to compare (ie i815 chipset)?

[Addendum: Oh forgot - I used DX8a and DX7 as provided on Win2k with the same severe frame drop. I think it's the chipset or it's not talking AGP4x for some silly reason]


[Edited by KermitTheFrag on 17th April 2001 at 13:57]

[neo_ad]

NTFS has worked fine for me for about 5 months and counting and my pc is on 24/7 :P

[D0c]

I must say i'm a ME fan...

I got ME with my new computer and it's been working fine. When i upgraded to 2k, all of my games had to be reinstalled and my GeForce2 graphics card slowed RIGHT down to about 60fps...

Dunno what'll be better on the SL5 network, but i think that 2k will work better, even if it didn't detect half of my sound/graphics hardware no matter what i try.

[Ratty]

ok who is the longest with WinME?
Expect yer machine to pop its clogs. I had it for 2 weeks, it refused to see ANY network. Programs crashed randomly,and countless other things.
If you get a chance, try Whistler. Is is the best thing they have done. Win2K they re-wrote 90% of the core and left a little of win98 shtuff. Whistler, they re-wrote the last 10%. Its stable as a stable thing, and is faster booting. It runs games like win98 and is secure as win2K. Definatley a system to get.
Also if you haven't tried it yet, try IE6. Very nice too.
my £0.02

;)

[Cabe]

I dunno about you lot, but I can put up with slower frame rates if it means that the game doesnt crash out on me.

[Idylla]

Originally posted by KermitTheFrag
This week I have been amostly running DirectX 8.0a and Nvidia Ref drivers 6.50 and 7.58.

7.58 gives fastest pure DirectX8
6.50 gives fastest pure DirectX7



Erm wrong.

According to 3dmark 2000 and 3dmark 2001 which admittedly are synthetic benchmarks, but make most use of DirectX technology you are completely wrong.

I cant comment on DX7 drivers cos they are too old and no-one uses them any more, but when it comes to detonator the newer the drivers the faster.

Detonator 12.00 extreme beta that i got my hands on gave me an extra 200 3dmarks over 11.10 detonator drivers.

This is of course based on the newer geforce and geforce 2 based cards, because no increase is seen in the older cards.

Finally i would like to say that all you IDIOTS that say WinME is rubbish are just that. I've used it in conjunction with win2k on my dual boot system and i have to say that it boots extremely quickly, is pretty stable, has rock solid pure fps performance, has greater support for more devices, and has more win2k like features than its predecessors. All you idiots that say WinME is rubbish probably did the unthinkable and upgraded which causses all manner of problems.

Dont slate what you havn't used for a long time.

Thx.

[Ratty]

No i didnt upgrade anything! This is a really bad system. I am speaking from experience. Yes it did run fast upon booting, it was stable, but only for a few weeks and then it went mammories verticle. If you have gotten your WinME to run any longer than a month, then your a good'un. It has been reported to have some networking problems. Then it has some issues with a few drivers (granted all windoze are the same) but more than usual. I do know of some people who say that WinME is a good system but are confused as to why they have errors when surfing and trying to locate networks all the time. Reason:- Their system decides to think that the particular program its running is not good enuff for it and promptly throws up an error. WinME has/is/will be a mistake made by Micro$haft. If you want to use it, I am just a nobody giving my opinion on the hassle and grief it has caused me since it was installed. If you get it working and dont have any errors then go ahead and use it to your little hearts content.

[Scarr]

I use 98 and haven't used Me, so i won't commment on that aspect. Just wondered if anyone else has noticed a weird thing with the 12.00 detenators. I have a geForce 256 which should run at 120 core and 166 memory as standard and overclock quite well. With the 12.00 drivers installed it seems to have a base clock speed of 100 core and 83 memory.

Just wondered if anyone else has noticed this???

[Messy]

well well well yes u are right.....microsoft made something that worked....primarily because NT 4 + service packs was such a rock solid os in the first place but it lacked games support.....think of 2k as nt4(with games support)

its also far more compatible with AMD chipsets than ME but there are a still a few bugs that u have to get patches for. ME isnt nearly as good as 2k for one reason, u plug your netcard/(or any other card) if detects the card as u start up and installs all the drivers no hassle, network cards is even better it brings an astounding 0 dialogue boxes to install the netcard and boom ur network is up and running

atm i have 3 network adpaters in ym system, my isdn, my netgear and my 3com(wake on lan supported) all running smooth as a button and no problems at all. this may happen in ME but i didnt see ME having the control or flexibility of 2k when i had it installed.

[ZStation]

WinME sucks, I'm sorry.

I borrowed a copy from work for evaluation - it died. 3 weeks, and it died.

Nothing fancy on my machine at that time either - a 440BX board with a P3, a GeForce SDR, a SBLive!, and a Diva ISDN.

Everything was peachy for a few weeks, then it started to grind and wheeze. Then it kept crashing. All I was doing was web browsing, email and CS. Nothing else installed other than the essentials.

Went back to 2000 Pro.

One thing I must say, though - Me is fantastic on laptops. Me flew on my Compaq 166MMX lappy.

ZS

[Idylla]

(23:47:08) (DtK^laptop) os[Windows ME (4.90 - 3000)] uptime[1w 13h 57m 23s] cpu[1-AMD K6/2, 501MHz] mem[Usage: 105/128MB (82.03%)*[||||||||--]]

This is the stats of my brother's pc, which is running WindowsME and was last formatted around 4months ago.

This is a 1 week uptime and i can tell you that its still rock solid, none of the dodgy effects i sometimes see on WinME machines.

So to all you non believers NER NER NER NER :)

[Ratty]

I dont non-believe.....i know. I have had the experience of a bad windows ME.
And b4 you say anything, it was reinstalled a few times and it still did the same thing.
I dont like it, wont like it and I will never like it.
This is just my opinion, if you can get it to work, well done!

[Reborn Phoenix]

Can someone tell me where to get the newest detonaters plz :)

[KermitTheFrag]

You can get all the detonators you (or even I - master of windows breakage) could ever break at:-

http://www.the-ctrl-alt-del.com/Drivers.htm

Going back to WinME - does anyone know what is it like on the AMD 760/761 chipsets?? I'm just about to replace my Intel rig with an Asus A7M266 board, a new proccy and a whole load of PC2100 DDR ;)

Also, is Win2k any good on AMD based systems (stability wise) - All I've heard is people complaining about how crap the 4 in 1 drivers are?!?!??

[afty]

WinME is good, and MS's best consumer OS to date - more stable and feature packed than 98, more efficient etc. but it's not as good as Win2k.

Quite a few people do report lower frame rates on Win2k, but usually not by a significant amount, and often because drivers aren't top notch for win2k + their card.

Personally, next time I blank my PC and re-partition I'll be dual booting the two.
Or perhaps even triple booting to some flavour of Linux in an attempt to find a stable Tribes2 environment.

[KermitTheFrag]

Originally posted by afty
Personally, next time I blank my PC and re-partition I'll be dual booting the two.
Or perhaps even triple booting to some flavour of Linux in an attempt to find a stable Tribes2 environment.


I'm now single booting Win2k after WinME finally died today. It's got to be a record for me though - I mean I reinstall so often, three weeks is good now. I reinstalled *twice* at i7 :D

Oh, forget Tribes 2 on Linux - the voice comms doesnt work apparently and it crashes a lot with Nvidia's latest GLX XF server modules. People have been going ape in the SuSE lists about it for some reason. The only thing I could ever get to work well in Linux was UT on a Voodoo3 3k using libGlide and the 3dfx pseudo device driver - worked stunningly on Slackware 4.something only.

[jase]

Well ive been running Win2K for a year now, on all my machines, and so far, I havent seen a single BSOD. Well done M$. Its about time that you acheived a stable peice of software.

[afty]

Originally posted by KermitTheFrag
[BOh, forget Tribes 2 on Linux - the voice comms doesnt work apparently and it crashes a lot with Nvidia's latest GLX XF server modules. [/B]

Ta for the stability heads up. My flatmate will be doing the Linux T2 thing before me, so I'll wait and see.

Incidentally, the internal voice comms in Tribes2 is a bit ****y - *really* bandwidth intensive. Everyone on modem or ISDN (90% of the playing public) should turn it off.

We use Roger Wilco...

[KermitTheFrag]

As for Linux Tribes 2 I'd wait for a bit - at least a few more patches in. I wont touch it on mine at the moment as I've just about got SuSE working properly :D

I noticed - all you get is people saying "ha ha im eating your bandwidth". Then they get kicked by vote...

[afty]

Yeah - but then if I dual boot, if it is unstable I'll just run the Windows version. Which is unstable.

Incidentally, I'm in 2 minds (ethically). I've payed for the game, so I don't want to pay for it AGAIN for Linux, but then I want to reward Loki games for porting it.

Bah.

[Idylla]

Originally posted by jase
Well ive been running Win2K for a year now, on all my machines, and so far, I havent seen a single BSOD. Well done M$. Its about time that you acheived a stable peice of software.

You obviously havn't tried upgrading your mobo whilst Win2k was installed to a new mobo that had a RAID port on it then have ya :P)

If you try to boot off the RAID it does a BSOD during bootup saying that the bootdisk could not be initialized.

Fixed by either booting off IDE - as slow as fk, or by reinstalling windows using the "Install a 3rd party SCSI or RAID driver"

[afty]

That is a pretty extreme case though DTK :)

Under Linux you'd have to recompile your kernel before you even swapped out your mobo wouldn't you? And then if sth went wrong... recompile to old version?

IMO 2K aint all that bad :)

[KermitTheFrag]

Win2k sucks for hardware changes. I mean it blew up when I replaced an i815E motherboard with the i815EP motherboard. They use the same drivers etc, so I was stuffed...

As for the Linux thing - go out and buy it for Linux again as you'll keep the loki crowd alive. I did it with Q3a coz it had a nice box :D

[afty]

I probably will ;)

[Embattle]

There was a beta release of DX8 that gave a 3DMARK 2000 result that was equal to Win9x platforms but then with the next beta release it went back to normal.

Remember when using W2K to use the refresh rate fix http://www.tweakfiles.com/video/nvidiarefreshratefix.html

[KermitTheFrag]

Cool - thanks for that. I was having problems with this monitor and refresh rates. :D