God WinMe sucks
- Thread starter mpjesse
- Start date
yoda271828
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- Dec 31, 2007
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Yes, but some of the important functionality has been removed. Go ahead and try: 'format /s', or an 'fdisk', or even just running DOS without Windows. The WinMe DOS is a castrated version that can only be run in the Windows environment. It lost all of it's real usefulness.
WinMe sucks
WinMe sucks
I forgot the time I have used DOS last time in Win9x system. I thought that these OSes are mostly for games, nothing more. Why would I fdisk from ME have no idea (even I do it with ME boot up disk). And why do you need a floppy with ME's system files. Use boot up disk that was created with ME installation. Otherwise I am using 98-boot disk for anything else... hehe
its not too late yet...
its not too late yet...
Important stuff people should know about Windows ME.
I wanted to post this in a thread more people would see.
Worth the read, really.
Ripped from emulators.com / secrets
Now here is the major problem with Windows Millennium. In order to out SOMETHING on the box to say "hey, look, we added a new feature", Microsoft added this ridiculous "PC Health" feature to Millennium. Sounds sexy. Oooh, the operating system repairs itself. And when it screws up big time, you can "roll back" to an earlier installation. Sort of an "undo" feature in the OS, although, really, is this something you really want to advertise? Hey, our operating system is so unstable, we make it easy for you to go back to an earlier configuration!
Anyway, one of the things PC Health does as part of this System Restore feature is it constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY, keeps backing up files. Since Windows Millennium was released a few weeks ago, we've received email after email after email from our customers saying that since upgrading to Millennium, their computers are running slower and their hard disk keeps thrasing.
The reason is very simple. Every file accessed, every documented opened, every file touched gets backed up to a hidden directory called C:\_RESTORE\TEMP. This is fine if you are dealing with letters to grandma that are a few kilobytes in size, but what about large bitmaps? Large disk image files used by emulation software? Large downloads from the Internet? Yup, they get duplicated too.
In fact, we've easily been able to see that any computer we've upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows Millennium does in fact run slower and the hard disk is almost always on! I tried to disable the System Restore feature, by clicking on Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore, only to discover that System Restore can't be turned off there.
Worse, according to Microsoft's own documentation, (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/techart/winmesr.htm) the System Restore feature will keep backing up files until your hard disk fills up! The System Restore feature shuts itself off once your hard disk has less than 200 megabytes of disk space. However even this is not enough. In once instance, while running SoftMac 2000 with a 600 megabyte disk image file, the system managed to completely fill up the C: drive, causing Windows to no longer be able to grow the swap file. As a result, SoftMac ran out of memory, the Windows desktop ran out of memory and could not refresh the desktop properly, and the whole machine crashed and burned. We needed to reboot, at which point there were only a few megabytes of space left on what hours earlier had been a mostly empty 6 gigabyte hard disk! System Restore had copied gigabytes of useless duplicate files (including many copies of the 600 meg Macintosh disk image) to the hidden directory.
How to shut this off? Well, this was the kicker. You can't simply delete the backed up files because the entire _RESTORE directory is marked as in use and thus can't be deleted. And since Microsoft removed the "Exit to DOS" feature, one can't just exit Windows to a DOS prompt like before. While there is an obscure "Disable System Restore" option buried away in the System control panel applet, interestingly enough under the "Performance - File System - Troubleshooting" tab, that still doesn't help with all the wasted hard disk space.
So here is my brute force solution to shut off and remove all traces of System Restore:
In Control Panels, Add/Remove Programs, create a Windows boot disk. It's really an MS-DOS boot disk.
Shut down Windows and reboot the PC from the floppy disk.
Go the C: prompt by typing C:
Type "C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\DELTREE C:\_RESTORE" to remove all the System Restore files.
Create a bogus file called _RESTORE by, for example, running EDIT and creating a blank text file.
Type "C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\ATTRIB +r +s +h _RESTORE" to hide this file. This will prevent Windows from re-creating its hidden directory.
Now reboot the PC and watch Windows Millennium run much faster!
On a machine that lacks a floppy disk drive, such as a notebook computer, you're pretty much hosed. We have such a machine, which we upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows Millennium via the network (the notebook itself has no floppy and no CD-ROM drive). After upgrading, the machine was thrashing like mad. Well, without the ability to exit into DOS mode (a simple feat under Windows 95 and Windows 98) the only thing I could do was unscrew the internal 2.5" hard disk, pop it into another notebook computer that had a floppy, do the above steps, then pop the drive back into the original machine. It took about 15 minutes but worked.
The whole System Restore feature is just an idiotic idea. Instead of wasting disk space and CPU cycles backing up files, Microsoft should expend more effort in merging Windows 9x with Windows NT and gaining reliability by means of the NT kernel. If you want to back your files or your entire hard disk, there are many excellent and inexpensive utilities out there to do that. Microsoft should stay out of the file backup business, and should especially not add features that eat up all of the PC's disk space and CPU cycles!
I wanted to post this in a thread more people would see.
Worth the read, really.
Ripped from emulators.com / secrets
Now here is the major problem with Windows Millennium. In order to out SOMETHING on the box to say "hey, look, we added a new feature", Microsoft added this ridiculous "PC Health" feature to Millennium. Sounds sexy. Oooh, the operating system repairs itself. And when it screws up big time, you can "roll back" to an earlier installation. Sort of an "undo" feature in the OS, although, really, is this something you really want to advertise? Hey, our operating system is so unstable, we make it easy for you to go back to an earlier configuration!
Anyway, one of the things PC Health does as part of this System Restore feature is it constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY, keeps backing up files. Since Windows Millennium was released a few weeks ago, we've received email after email after email from our customers saying that since upgrading to Millennium, their computers are running slower and their hard disk keeps thrasing.
The reason is very simple. Every file accessed, every documented opened, every file touched gets backed up to a hidden directory called C:\_RESTORE\TEMP. This is fine if you are dealing with letters to grandma that are a few kilobytes in size, but what about large bitmaps? Large disk image files used by emulation software? Large downloads from the Internet? Yup, they get duplicated too.
In fact, we've easily been able to see that any computer we've upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows Millennium does in fact run slower and the hard disk is almost always on! I tried to disable the System Restore feature, by clicking on Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore, only to discover that System Restore can't be turned off there.
Worse, according to Microsoft's own documentation, (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/techart/winmesr.htm) the System Restore feature will keep backing up files until your hard disk fills up! The System Restore feature shuts itself off once your hard disk has less than 200 megabytes of disk space. However even this is not enough. In once instance, while running SoftMac 2000 with a 600 megabyte disk image file, the system managed to completely fill up the C: drive, causing Windows to no longer be able to grow the swap file. As a result, SoftMac ran out of memory, the Windows desktop ran out of memory and could not refresh the desktop properly, and the whole machine crashed and burned. We needed to reboot, at which point there were only a few megabytes of space left on what hours earlier had been a mostly empty 6 gigabyte hard disk! System Restore had copied gigabytes of useless duplicate files (including many copies of the 600 meg Macintosh disk image) to the hidden directory.
How to shut this off? Well, this was the kicker. You can't simply delete the backed up files because the entire _RESTORE directory is marked as in use and thus can't be deleted. And since Microsoft removed the "Exit to DOS" feature, one can't just exit Windows to a DOS prompt like before. While there is an obscure "Disable System Restore" option buried away in the System control panel applet, interestingly enough under the "Performance - File System - Troubleshooting" tab, that still doesn't help with all the wasted hard disk space.
So here is my brute force solution to shut off and remove all traces of System Restore:
In Control Panels, Add/Remove Programs, create a Windows boot disk. It's really an MS-DOS boot disk.
Shut down Windows and reboot the PC from the floppy disk.
Go the C: prompt by typing C:
Type "C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\DELTREE C:\_RESTORE" to remove all the System Restore files.
Create a bogus file called _RESTORE by, for example, running EDIT and creating a blank text file.
Type "C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\ATTRIB +r +s +h _RESTORE" to hide this file. This will prevent Windows from re-creating its hidden directory.
Now reboot the PC and watch Windows Millennium run much faster!
On a machine that lacks a floppy disk drive, such as a notebook computer, you're pretty much hosed. We have such a machine, which we upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows Millennium via the network (the notebook itself has no floppy and no CD-ROM drive). After upgrading, the machine was thrashing like mad. Well, without the ability to exit into DOS mode (a simple feat under Windows 95 and Windows 98) the only thing I could do was unscrew the internal 2.5" hard disk, pop it into another notebook computer that had a floppy, do the above steps, then pop the drive back into the original machine. It took about 15 minutes but worked.
The whole System Restore feature is just an idiotic idea. Instead of wasting disk space and CPU cycles backing up files, Microsoft should expend more effort in merging Windows 9x with Windows NT and gaining reliability by means of the NT kernel. If you want to back your files or your entire hard disk, there are many excellent and inexpensive utilities out there to do that. Microsoft should stay out of the file backup business, and should especially not add features that eat up all of the PC's disk space and CPU cycles!
good point, but one thing i still cant get in this "article" - why should i completely remove the _restore directory, i am just cleaning it once in a while. It is really helpful thing. Each time my 4 year old screws the windows up so it is barely boots, i just restore the good stuff and ready to go, after it gets to a point of 500 megs, just clean the thing from anything, boot, and make a restore point again. Wholla, sucker, you are ready to go.
And for the 900mhz the system runs perfectly awesome, i am running divx;-) while writing this thing at half of the screen by the way... hehe
its not too late yet...
And for the 900mhz the system runs perfectly awesome, i am running divx;-) while writing this thing at half of the screen by the way... hehe
its not too late yet...
hi
No problems with windows ME here. Have it running on three of my four machines. Me running onmy three game boxes and win2k running on my business machine.
The only problem i had with me was a problem it had recognizing my mx-300 sound card on one machine. Seeing how i couldnt find any updated drivers i dumped in a soundblaster live with me drivers and all works fine. (although i have heard of guys running the mx 300 and me with no probs)
Faster boot times are a plus,but the biggest thing i like about me is the improved support for broadband technology. I have a roadrunner business account now but when i had the residential service i noticed a nice increase in d/l transfer rates. With windows 98 i had too hack the registry and d/l some patches to get descent speeds. Loaded ME and got 600-800kbps with no hacks. (it leveled off to the cap but by the time it did that the d/l was done)
I have to agree with the posters on the system restore feature. I dont like it, but it is handy if u hose your system, and need to restart.
No fps loss in any games. Quake 3 benchmarks at 147fps with a athlon t-bird and geforce ultra (clocked at 1.2) and i ran a loopback benchmark for 12 hrs without probs.
I have some customers that run ME and some like it some dont, but thats the same for any OS.
just my opinions and experiences with ME.
thanks for reading
mark
gamerx_2001@yahoo.com
"I thought i would never see a resonance cascade, let alone create one."
No problems with windows ME here. Have it running on three of my four machines. Me running onmy three game boxes and win2k running on my business machine.
The only problem i had with me was a problem it had recognizing my mx-300 sound card on one machine. Seeing how i couldnt find any updated drivers i dumped in a soundblaster live with me drivers and all works fine. (although i have heard of guys running the mx 300 and me with no probs)
Faster boot times are a plus,but the biggest thing i like about me is the improved support for broadband technology. I have a roadrunner business account now but when i had the residential service i noticed a nice increase in d/l transfer rates. With windows 98 i had too hack the registry and d/l some patches to get descent speeds. Loaded ME and got 600-800kbps with no hacks. (it leveled off to the cap but by the time it did that the d/l was done)
I have to agree with the posters on the system restore feature. I dont like it, but it is handy if u hose your system, and need to restart.
No fps loss in any games. Quake 3 benchmarks at 147fps with a athlon t-bird and geforce ultra (clocked at 1.2) and i ran a loopback benchmark for 12 hrs without probs.
I have some customers that run ME and some like it some dont, but thats the same for any OS.
just my opinions and experiences with ME.
thanks for reading
mark
gamerx_2001@yahoo.com
"I thought i would never see a resonance cascade, let alone create one."
yoda271828
Distinguished
- Dec 31, 2007
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Well ME is ok due to the new technology, i just disable the auto updates and in troublshooting i disable the back up, then with tweakui diable teh transitions, effects, and animations, and it runs pretty good. Here at work though i have to run SE because i need backward compatability with older hardware and sfotware. Get ME if you have newer hardware and all the drivers, get SE if you have older hardware and like to run DOS apps.
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