[Poxnor]

Hello guys and gals!

I was wondering if I may be able to get a bit of advice from all the friendly folk out there.

I'm going to be installing WinXP Pro onto my box in a few days (after Christmas). But I want to keep a 9x OS around for compatibility purposes (Final Fantasy VII <grin>).

I'm going to be using PartitionMagic 7.0 to manage by multiple OSes.

So I'd just like to pose the question to all of you: Which would be the better second OS to keep around, 98se or ME?

Personally, I've had some bad experiences with Windows ME becoming quite unstable (even to the point of it crashing on its very first boot after install). But I've heard that with proper tweaking, it can become a good OS. Can anyone offer any support or refutation to this?

Also, another thing I'd like to know: Does ME provide any bonus, or added features over 98se? Is anything taken away, or lost from 98se?

Are there any tweaks that would improve stability or performance on either OS? How about the order I install my drivers, etc. in? Would these things make a big difference, or is that mostly wives' tales and hype that order of install matters?

Now, I know that this topic can get quite heated, so I'd like to personally ask everyone to keep this to a cool and reasonable discussion, hehe. Can you guys do that for me...flames scare me

Thank you very much, in advance, for your advice, opinions, and help!

--Poxnor

AMD T-Bird 1.4 GHz (266)
Asus A7M266 Motherboard (AMD Northbridge, Via Southbridge)
256 Megs PC2100 DDR(266) RAM
SBLive 5.1 Dolby Digital
Creative Labs GraphicsBlaster RivaTNT
Plextor PlexWriter 16/10/40A

Umm, that's about all the important hardware I can think of, if it matters...drop a line if the hardware of my computer is going to play an important role in the 98se vs. ME debate, and I can post more specifics

[Xiven]

I'd say go with 98SE. ME adds very little that is useful and takes up much more space compared to 98.

It does depend on how much you'll be using the 98 partition though. If it's ONLY for FF7 then 98 is definitely the way to go. If you want to do other stuff then you might want to consider ME.

[mister_man]

ME has no access to REAL DOS mode. But I find that ME scans the PS/2 port faster giving better mouse control.

I had sound issues on ME with my computer so I had to use 98se until I got Windows 2000 and now I finally have XP pro.

ME also apparently has BETA versions of IE and Windows Media Player 7 in it. It really depends on how much space you are willing to allocate to the 9x partition and if ME is compatible with your system.

[Brian Frank]

ME is marketing bullsh1t. It's like a bad, beta version of 98 with prettier GUI, and only slightly. Avoid it like the plague. ME is worthless as an OS, and good only as an expensive coaster.

[Poxnor]

Thank you very much for your responses

I appreciate all of your help and suggestions!

One other question...I was reading that PartitionMagic has issues with the DOS Driver for the SBLive. Would not being able to load the Dos driver before entering Windows affect the SBLive under Win98? Or is the Win98 SBLive driver run completely independently of whether or not the DOS driver is loaded? It's been so long since I've used a 9x OS that I can't remember how that worked, hehe.

Thanks =)

[pmistry]

You don't need the DOS SB Driver unless you need to run a DOS app with sound in real mode, like a DOS Game such as Doom. I would pick ME over 98 SE if DOS isn't important. I find that ME runs better on newer hardware.

[JP-]

ME is a weird 1. I hear so many negative comments (like brians :))about it but yet in my experience i found it to be a fairly good OS. Ive had it installed on 4 PCs now and none of them have had any problems. It is bigger than 98SE but i would still use it simply because it looks and 'feels' better and more like win2000 (authough obviously it isnt)

Why do you want to use partition magic btw? You can setup your partitions before hand using the winXP installer and then format them in there respective install programs as NTFS/FAT32.

[INFERNO2000]

The only good thing that ME brings to the table is the backup feature.

Other than that, I trust 98SE a hell of a lot more.

[ryoko]

Here is something to thing about, Ziff Davis (ZDNET) downgraded all their ME computers to 98SE.

[JP-]

Maybe they should upgrade them to 2000 eh

[CyberGenX]

ME runs great on some machines and crappy on others, JUST like SE/98. I would go with 98SE as it runs faster on ANY computer than ME does.

[pmistry]

98 SE is really getting old. I mean a 4 year old OS on new less than 6 month old machines is not worth it. Get Windows 2000 as a minimum. There is no real reason not to anymore.

[CyberGenX]

I agree with you in the sense that a new machine SHOULD have Win2K on it. I love Win2K. BUT for those that aren't doing much on their new or newly upgraded machines i.e. Using it for email, Office, and Everquest, 2000 is a little much don't you think? 98SE is cheap (usually free if you still have the CD) and it is still a supported OS by even some of the newest hardware. I am a computer service company owner/technician and a always have at least 45% of new machines we build requested with 98SE on them.

[pmistry]

Yeah for simple uses 98 is ok, but realistically it is getting old, and MS will discontinue its support for it next year. You might as well get ME or try to learn 2000 since all Windows will be based on 2000 and up.

[whoisit]

I am using a dual boot WinXP Pro/98SE right now. I could've use ME but it doesn't handle DOS games very well. You don't need Partition Magic to switch between OSes. Just install XP second and the loader will handle it for you. Most of the time, 98 and ME use the same drivers. I have no idea why Microsoft released ME when everyone knows that XP is coming out the following year. Here's something that ME can't do but available with 98SE: install multiple copies on different partitions. Let's say you want to install English 98 on C and another 98 on D. It is possible to alter between the two without using Partition Magic (Partition Magic doesn't alter anyway). This is not possible with ME. ME runs slower than 98SE. It does have the System Restore feature, though.

[pmistry]

I've got a fairly recent computer and ME and 98 and 98 SE all run the same. I stopped using 98 because it would always crash while running one of my games, Need For Speed: High Stakes, and I have no clue why. It would install and load fine but while running it would just bomb out. Tried every single driver release too. So I updated the install to ME with the same drivers and it never crashed again. I reformatted with 98 to see if the problem would persist and it did.

[Champion_R]

Win ME was released just to shut the OEMs up. They had to keep giving 98SE with their computers and wanted something new to ship.

Thats what I think anyway.

[pmistry]

What's interesting is that OEMs still offer 98 SE instead of ME and XP, around here anyway.

[deeman]

I have XP Pro and 98SE Installed on my PC, and it runs like a dream, I've done it for the same reasons as you, as good as XP is, unfortunately alot've my fav games won't work.

I didn't use any partitioning or dual boot software, all I did was install XP, run up all of the drivers and configure it till I was happy, then pop in the 98SE CD, restart the computer (Making sure that the first boot device is set to CDROM in the bios) and away you go.

Make sure when it boots up that you don't run the setup from the cd, tell it to start with CDROM Support, and then pop into a command prompt, then copy the cabs into a folder on the drive, call it WIN98 or whatever. (To create a folder, type MD WIN98 , then of course CD WIN98 to get into the folder), to copy the cabs folder, while in your new WIN98 directory, just type F:\WIN98 (F is whatever your CDROM driver letter is) Once they're copied, run the setup with the /is command after it "setup /is"

I've really explained this on the fly, sorry for any typos and anything that didn't make sense, I can give you a more detailed explanation if need be.

Good luck,

Daniel

[deeman]

Something that's funny about your comment PMISTRY, is that even after ME was released, and all of the wholesalers announced that they were clearing out 'leftover' copies of Windows 98. Funny that, there seemed to be a huge excess, because this was over a year ago, and suprise suprise 98SE OEM Is still available.
Thank god tho, I worked for a major computer retailer, and we packaged our PC's with Millenium for under a month before we said 'f*ckit, back to 98'
The amount of complaints people had with Millenium was unreal.