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Many people remember this operating system as not exactly a walk in the park, namely that it could crash as early as during the installation phase or at unexpected times when the user wasn't doing anything particular. It left a bitter taste, especially when compared to its predecessor Windows 98 SE which was a real treat compared to Windows 95.

I am unsure about what made it so crash prone; the first thing that comes to my mind would be bad drivers, however this is unlikely since the driver model hasn't changed from Windows 98 (unless I'm mistaken).

Online, there is little about what were the technical changes that ended up making it such a terrible operating system. The only plausible thing I could read about it was that it was forked from Windows 95 instead of Windows 98 but how could that be a possibility, as it doesn't really make much sense in the end?

What were the technical changes inside Windows Me that made it such an unstable operating system?

user3840170
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Eric Cartman
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    There were no technical changes. I think that was the problem. Hardware and software and other operating systems moved on. Windows Me was just layers of cruft built on an obsolete kernel. – JeremyP Jul 14 '19 at 08:55
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    Microsoft's original intention was to merge the Windows 9x and NT product lines into one core product that would be suitable for home and business users. They aimed to do this with Windows 2000, but weren't able to meet that deadline: they didn't get it done until Windows XP. Windows ME was a rushed stop-gap for the home market in the meantime. It added a lot of user-oriented features that were seen in XP, but was built upon the old DOS/9x foundation, which wasn't famed for its stability in the first place. – Kaz Jul 14 '19 at 10:35
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    I don't recall Windows ME crashing any more than Windows 95/98, but the main problem with Windows ME was that it removed features without really adding anything. –  Jul 14 '19 at 13:00
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    It wasn't so bad. There was a ham-fisted attempt to pretend it was "not DOS" but nothing fundamental changed in that respect. I recall it caused minor startup-related difficulties to some VxDs I maintained, but at this remove I cannot recall the details. Like others here I think its main problem was a rushed release after it became clear that NT 5.0 (absurdly renamed 2000) was not consumer-ready. – dave Jul 14 '19 at 13:42
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    @RossRidge you’re right. The problem is that people were getting used to operating systems like win2k, MacOS and Linux that just didn’t crash as often. Windows Me was fundamentally the same OS as 95. Expectations got better. – JeremyP Jul 14 '19 at 14:00
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    ME was part of a pattern of Windows that continues to this day. Build something good (more stable and/or better in other ways) and then the next version tends to be "junk" - e.g., lots of new user-unfriendly (and for most of my users that means "change for no apparent reason") features with no real advantages. So for myself (I don't think I ever owned a single ME, Vista or 8 machine) and most of my customers (all the ones that ask me before buying): 98: Yes, ME: No, XP: Yes, Vista: No, 7: Yes (and most still using 7), 8: No, 10: a very reluctant (being forced) Yes. – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact Jul 14 '19 at 14:03
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    98SE was a lot better than 98. It took awhile to get there – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jul 14 '19 at 15:05
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    I have no fond memories of windows ME. It wasn't a good product overall. This is unscientific, but I was there and I wouldn't dream for a second of restoring a windows ME, while I have crazy good memories of my ZX, or of my dos 6.22, or Windows 3.11 for workgoups boxes, to name just a few (the spectrum zx was not a box but you can see what I mean :-) ) – Francesco Jul 14 '19 at 18:34
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    They missed the Ballmer Peak. – Eric Duminil Jul 14 '19 at 19:09
  • Personally, I kind of liked ME. It did add new things compared to 98, such as support for compressed folders. – Andreas Rejbrand Jul 15 '19 at 12:08
  • There must have been technical changes that made it worse. We had a whole bunch of hardware that was rock solid on 98SE, but became very crash prone after upgrading to ME. Rolled a batch of them back to 98SE and solid again. – Brian Knoblauch Jul 15 '19 at 14:11
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    Windows ME was the first version with System Restore, which previously was a concept handled by third-party software like "GoBack", that could possibly allow malware to stay hidden in the System Restore partition. I don't have hard data on it, but many of the ME computers we disabled this feature on worked much better and crashed less afterwards. – PhasedOut Jul 15 '19 at 20:20
  • I'm not sure it was particularly more crash-prone than 98. I think it just got a bad rep in the same way that Vista and 8 did (yet those two are absolutely fine when service-packed up). – Alan B Jul 16 '19 at 09:30
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    It might have been the "Windows" part. – WBT Jul 16 '19 at 13:54
  • Perhaps it's just me, but I had Windows ME and used it with no particular issues for 4 years (when it started to became so sluggish that it was unusable). I don't really see it as more bugged than Win95 or Win98. But then, I'm probably much more careful than most users: I don't install crap and I don't fiddle randomly with the OS. – dr_ Jul 17 '19 at 05:38

4 Answers4

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I am unsure about what made it so crash prone

To start with, it wasn't. Windows ME was not much different from 98SE and on its own as stable as its predecessor.

The only plausible thing I could read about it was that it was forked from Windows 95 instead of Windows 98 but how could that be a possibility as it doesn't really make much sense in the end?

It wasn't. ME was based on 98SE with some parts (like the network stack) ported down from Win2k.

What were the technical changes inside it that made it such an unstable operating system?

Now this comes closer to one of the factors why ME was such a failure, as MS did take away much compatibility for DOS without offering any replacement. Like ignoring all installations done via AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS. Likewise HIMEM handling was changed - and while it improved performance notably, it broke the ability of many DOS programs to run. But not only DOS programs were affected, even rather up-to-date Windows programs could fail due to a changed registry structure.

More important than all technical reasoning, ME was a product and marketing failure

  • First ME was hyped as kind of a Win2k 'light'.
    • Creating a feeling of buyers being second class.
  • Next ME switched (after initially different communication) to be DOS based,
    • but at the same time with reduced DOS compatibility
    • Even worse, some of these changes crippled a major use for home PCs: Games
  • All announced new features targeted only the home market (Not SOHO)
    • Creating an image of being just good for non serious work (whereas Win98 was perceived as generally capable).
  • MS supported this by pushing professional users toward Windows 2000 Professional
    • Indicating once more that ME is not intended for anything but 'simple' home use.
  • MS advertisement focused on "easy", "simple" and "just works"
    • Again creating the image it's meant for some 'less experienced' user group, not existing Windows users.
  • While some internal components were taken from Win2k, no new capabilities were ported.
    • Offering no incentive to adapt advanced software to ME
  • Real new/improved applications like Internet Exploder, Office, etc. were available for Win98 as well.
    • Removing any reason to switch because of applications.
  • The desktop was a crude mix-up of Win2k elements with a Win98 colour scheme.
    • Thus it was hard to see any improvement at first.

All of this already created a rather negative image upfront, by reviews and word of mouth. Most common a feeling of ME being without any gain. By actual users this was enhanced due to

  • incompatibility issues
    • especially for DOS,
    • and many Games
  • a crude UI mix-up between Win2k and Win98 (*1),
  • no new functionality (*2),
  • additional investment for new device drivers (Device driver signature)

As a result ME combined the spending money and incompatibility issues with the burden of learning a new OS without any benefit of a real new one (for most cases).

A perfect storm and self fulfilling prophecy. Negative reviews create even more negative response with everyone competing to find the bad sides. A product with no need doesn't sell in masses in tech.

P.S.: Archive.Org has got a nice Test of ME from when it was new.

*1 - Colours have already been mentioned, but it goes deeper, like having Network dialogue looking like Win2k, while working like Win98, Menus looking like Win2k but missing functions, or even worse, the items in the control panel being halfway between Win98 and Win2k.

*2 - To be fair, MS did add a lot of features in media handling, game support and power management - just none of them anywhere near a killer feature.

Raffzahn
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  • Raffzahn, I remember game support in Windows ME as being very bad for numerous pre-existing DOS games. As I remember, it seemed like DOS wasn't acting like DOS. So does the game support you mention mean new features to support future games? Sometimes even installation of older games would be thwarted by W.ME. – RichF Jul 14 '19 at 17:20
  • @RichF Oh, no doubt, ME offered a lot of problems with existing DOS games (I guess I should add this (though already covered with DOS incompatibility) as it is as well a negative point right at their target market). The new functions where regarding networking and sound support for Windows games, DOS games did not get any inovation. – Raffzahn Jul 14 '19 at 17:28
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    "Internet Exploder' - LOL! – Bruce Abbott Jul 14 '19 at 22:19
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    "Internet Exploder" is a pun 13-year-olds used in the early 2000's. – user253751 Jul 14 '19 at 23:21
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    Not just 13 year old - it's been the standard term at work - heck, one (uninitiated) users even belived it to be the real name and used it in a customer handout :)) And it was all true, as IE caused endless problems with our (late 90s) web applications. – Raffzahn Jul 15 '19 at 00:17
  • I used both Win2K and WinME at my house at the same time. I'd also used everything from DOS 1.1 up through Win98SE by that time. I think the real reason "WinME crashed all the time!" was the Internet was finally reaching far enough into people's lives that people had dumped their older Windows machines. – Julie in Austin Jul 15 '19 at 05:07
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    I can't forget a website I saw nearly twenty years ago: "Worst viewed with Microsloth Inter-nut Exploder." – Cort Ammon Jul 15 '19 at 05:59
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    The abbreviation ME was said to mean "Mistake Edition". – rexkogitans Jul 15 '19 at 12:34
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    It might be worth noting that the VxD and WDM driver models had a tendency to conflict with each other, instead of helping WDM to supplant VxD while retaining significant backwards compatibility (as intended). This tended to cause stability issues on systems requiring a mixture of both types of drivers. I'm not entirely sure of the details, or what went wrong, though; the phasing-out process started with 98, which mixed VxD and WDM without nearly as many issues. Perhaps it stemmed from ME being more reliant on WDM than 98 was, I don't have enough info for a full-fledged answer. – Justin Time - Reinstate Monica Jul 15 '19 at 21:18
  • @ZacFaragher back in the day, that is how IE was referred to in industry, at least in US and UK software infrastructure companies. The product was next to useless. – Greenonline Jul 16 '19 at 06:38
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    @Greenonline thanks for the explanation, but I'm not so young as to never have heard the expression before. Like it or not, IE became the default standard for enterprise compatibility - if you had a third party website you needed to use, it would only be guaranteed to work in IE - and if it worked in other browsers, well that was just dandy. – Zac Faragher Jul 16 '19 at 06:43
  • @ZacFaragher I guess that depends a lot on the region you'd live. While IE was a considerable main player in the US, it was always just a second in Europe. At that time I worked at a fairly large company with high level MS contracts - still, development was done (and required) to fit Netscape first. We couldn't dare to make a product just working with IE. It would have just flopped. – Raffzahn Jul 16 '19 at 07:11
  • @Raffzahn I don't think it's quite as clear cut US vs. Europe, coming from Europe. I think it was mostly a random choice since about IE 4.0, with each browser having its own pros and kinks. And of course, then Netscape did that stupid thing with starting from scratch, and lost pretty much everything until they finally managed to release Mozilla, for free, something like four years later (an eternity in internet time). The main thing is IMO a sort of networking effect - if your enterprise already used Netscape for something, they'd want everything in Netscape and vice versa. – Luaan Jul 16 '19 at 07:59
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    @Luaan No doubt, there was much variation in Europe. And that's the point compared to the US, where IE basically ruled from the late 90s into the early naughties. Over here it's been as well less about the organization (ours was meant to be 100% MS) but customers and they where much more diverse. IE reached more than 90% share. ~2001 IE at it's peak was over 90% in the US, but 'only' 60% in Europe and about 40% in Germany not its the smallest market. – Raffzahn Jul 16 '19 at 12:06
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    Thank you for this; my family had ME growing up (we had a pre-Jobs-return Mac prior to that, but it was our first PC), and I never remembered anything particularly wrong with it, which made all the vitriol over ME rather confusing to me. Since we didn’t have 98 to upgrade from or 2000 Pro to compare with, the lack of new features was a non-issue for us. – KRyan Jul 16 '19 at 12:30
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    WinME was the first Windows that natively supported USB flash disks without extra drivers (I remember how much of a pain that was under Windows 98 to get some flash disks running properly), but this was effectively the only good point for me in ME – SztupY Jul 16 '19 at 15:28
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    @JustinTime Back in the day most people with internet where on dailup and most modems where so-called WinModems (PCI cards). These worked fine on 95/98 (VxD based), but the VxD/WDM changes in Me seriously caused issues for these. WinPrinters same thing. I've dealt with at least 400 Me computers (rolling out work PC's back in the day) and our standard was: If there is a WinModem or WinPrinter involved go back to 98SE. – Tonny Jul 17 '19 at 14:49
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As mentioned by Justin Time, WDM and VXD drivers had a tendency to conflict.

This introduced a fairly strong "whether you remember WinME as great or garbage depends on the hardware you ran it on" element to people's recollections of it.

I didn't use it myself but the impression I got from people who did was that the rule of thumb was "If you're not going all-WDM, stay on 98SE".

(I stayed on Windows 98 SE long into the Windows XP era because I had a childishly petulant reaction to "Windows: Fisher-Price Edition" and wanted maximum compatibility with the games I actually ran.)

ssokolow
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My experience with ME was on a new build I made (1 GHz!) and I found it be the best build yet of Windows... However, I think I know what was wrong with it for others' uses. The memory handling was seriously flawed. I ran a little 'extra' called RAM something, and I could have it free up memory before running anything 'intensive' - or at any time really - as it showed the available, freeable and used amount all the time. Using that little extra made it extremely reliable - and it still is the only Windows build I ever used that would stay up 'clean' for weeks at a time. Perhaps 2 BSOD incidents in several years of use - until Linux took over my systems.

freebird54
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This was just part of MS operating cycle. If you look at the iterations of Windows (not including the NT line) from Win95 onwards then it looks like this:

Windows 95 - good
Windows 98 - flaky
Windows 98SE - good
Windows ME - flaky
Windows XP - good
Windows Vista - flaky
Windows 7 - good
Windows 8 - flaky
Windows 10 - good

So it can be seen that every second version was flaky* in some way, either more prone to crashes than its predecessor or otherwise just "not as good".

* This is entirely subjective, dependent on the particular hardware in use, other software installed, and on the opinion of the user.

** This answer should be taken with a measure of skepticism as to whether it is a serious answer or a little tongue-in-cheek.

Mick
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    Windows XP does not belong in the same line as windows ME. It’s the successor to Windows 2000. The windows 95 sequence should end at me. – JeremyP Jul 16 '19 at 09:52
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    You missed Windows 2000. – OrangeDog Jul 16 '19 at 09:55
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    And Windows NT. – Mark Booth Jul 16 '19 at 10:00
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    @JeremyP let's not have facts get in the way of the story ;-) – Mick Jul 16 '19 at 10:06
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    I was with you until "Windows 10 - good" – JBentley Jul 16 '19 at 14:12
  • Aw come on. Just because it's new doesn't mean it has to be bad. Win10 is a lot better than 8, and I'd consider it good. – Cullub Jul 16 '19 at 14:49
  • The flakey ones always seem to come after a long wait - so users have got used to how things work. – Benno Jul 16 '19 at 15:29
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    I'm amused how the perception is the reverse of classic Star Trek movies (eg, "only the even-numbered movies are good"), in this case "only the odd releases are good" – Wildcat Matt Jul 16 '19 at 16:51
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    There's also the potential here for more pedantry: I always thought Win95 Retail was shaky and only got it right with Win95 OEMSR2. – Wildcat Matt Jul 16 '19 at 16:53
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    Windows 8 - flaky; Windows 8.1 - good; Windows 10 - perpetual state of flux (thanks to the constant updates) – jmbpiano Jul 16 '19 at 17:20
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    Might also be worth looking at service packs, since Vista's second service pack made it good, and its third service pack (a.k.a. Win 7) made it phenomenal. ;P – Justin Time - Reinstate Monica Jul 16 '19 at 21:16
  • @Benno Nah. In reality, most of the trouble comes from misbehaving hardware, drivers and software; by the time the second ("minor") version comes along, most of the issues with the previous one are fixed, and you get a better experience. 95 was start of a new line (very little hardware variety), 98 was every bit as good as 95; ME was more pointless than bad (with some compatibility loss), Vista mostly had issues with drivers (64-bit drivers and GPU being major) and software that just had to have admin privileges for everything; there was very little MS had to change for 7. 8 was something new. – Luaan Jul 17 '19 at 07:05
  • Windows 2000 wasn't really a home user OS, although because of the issues with ME I ended up using it. IIRC it was missing one or two home-user cuddly type features as it was aimed at the professional market, so it's reasonable it doesn't make the list. – NibblyPig Jul 17 '19 at 11:48
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    The question asks what objective evidence exists to support a subjective opinion of Millenium’s instability; this post responds to it with even more subjective opinion. This isn’t even a tongue-in-cheek answer, it’s a non-answer. Especially that most people who repeat this silly meme have to stretch what counts as a ‘release’ in order to make it fit their personal view. – user3840170 Jan 19 '21 at 17:27