The Windows Me Experience: Was It THAT Bad?

[@littlesnowflakepunk855]

My mother was one of the technologically incompetent people recruited to test Windows ME and Microsoft Bob for ease of use, so I feel as though my family is directly responsible for their failures to some extent.

[@interlace84]

Depends on the feedback she gave 😄

[@thebasketballhistorian3291]

Someone now has to travel back in time to that era and stop your mom from ever reaching the Microsoft product testing center!

[@emilyofjane]

Imagine having that be your family’s eternal legacy. “the focus group idiots who helped greenlight Microsoft’s biggest mistakes” lmao

[@Tobi_DarkKnight]

@@thebasketballhistorian3291 i will go back in time for a lot of reasons. Should I stop Windows ME entirely?

[@carlosdelucia3487]

@@Tobi_DarkKnight yes

[@Kaucukovnik666]

"Hey, Windows help system, I have a problem, what should I do?" "Did you plug the device in?" "Yes." "Did you [another blindingly obvious option]? "Yes" "Windows help was unable to solve your problem. Please contact your administrator." (which is likely you)

[@christopherpetit1718]

To be fair, for most non-computer savvy users "Did you plug the device in and turn it on?" probably solves half of their computer problems.

[@Trashboat4444]

That applys to modern Windows as well.

[@gashetauwu1932]

Hello mr turner it's me, mr turner :D

[@codyisrude]

cortana can clearly help you with this it's not like cortana is diet coke bonzi buddy or anything

[@xjohnny1000]

@@codyisrude I keep 6 feet away for fear of catching the Cortanavirus.

[@NinjaRodent]

That "head space" skin for media player is the most late 90s thing I have ever seen.

[@krzysztofczarnecki8238]

So that's what happened to "Where did you learn to fly" head from Cybermorph

[@TheSuperQuail]

Also Lawnmower Man

[@take5transfat]

it’s made for listening to the matrix trilogy soundtracks rlly

[@JayTohab]

Reminds me of the first Xbox’s UI. Nostalgic!

[@PlymouthNeon]

the nostalgia in this video is killing me :(

[@rodjerdankist1125]

I remember when Windows XP came out... Simplified so many things. Really was a great OS.

[@koilamaoh4238]

i still use it on my mini netbook xp, as a server, still runs to this day. Love it.

[@dparent4487]

I feel like I’m the only one who hated xp, it’s so bland and looks like a toy lol

[@koilamaoh4238]

@@dparent4487 Yea its prety basic but it did a lot of things tho for being sooo basic and bland, but you know, you could always "dress" it up to look nicely even like windows 7,9,10 whatever lol; remember windows 10 is just a fancy dress. Only thing that sucks now, as they progressed, they tried to dumb Down windows and remove features due to the new "mobile" design on phones, they were taking the "APPLE" approach, so it would be dummy proof.

[@ScottGrammer]

@@koilamaoh4238 Nothing is ever idiot-proof, because idiots are so ingenious.

[@kamerad_marzuki3631]

@@koilamaoh4238 He's probably still remember how XP was hated when it's released.

[@hazardeur]

if you would have told me 20 years ago that in two decades, I will willingly watch a video of a guy installing Win ME for half an hour, I would have called you insane

[@DanHarkless_Halloween_YTPs_etc]

LOL! That's true.

[@GiorgosTube]

I pray to the gods of Linux I want be possessed with BSOD

[@tetsujin_144]

"I wonder what version of Real Player we'll be up to by then..."

[@komandoarshad8086]

Wait, u guys never use Windows ME before???

[@stang2184]

Same, yet here we are hahaha!

[@WigWoo1]

I grew up with Windows ME and I don't remember any problems... Though I was like 5-9 years old

[@jesus2621]

Same here never had any problem

[@CraigBaker96837]

I have to agree. I had a 10yo Gateway PC that ran ME, and it booted up and operated much faster than our HP that ran Vista.

[@HabadzaKalfa]

I have a similar Millennium Compaq as in the beginning of the video with the original Windows Me installed. It works fine with its default setup. However, at some point I went testing on how some components would go in addition, like alternate graphics cards and sound cards and whatnot (it doesn't actually have that much slots available to swap things). I can't remember which hardware configuration was it, but with some parts connected the Windows startup took literally hours, and I thought the HDD had broken all the sudden or that I had awakened some slumbering ancient God's computer virus. But I guess no, since everything ran smoothly again after removing all additional components. Maybe it was a driver issue (and it was virtually impossible to change the drivers or anything in that state). Might some day experiment a bit in case I'd be able to repeat that state and figure out what actually caused it.

[@nathanheaverlo9626]

I too was around 9-10 years old when my family bought a new pc with Windows ME on it. It was a Gateway PC (yes i know), it actually worked pretty good out of the box, especially watching DVDs which was huge for us. The problems started when we stuffed a mid range AGP graphics card, a few games on it, along with Microsoft Office (Microsoft Works back then). Had so many system crashes, attempts to use system restore, or that ugly white desktop "Safe Mode". It was really good for basic use, but for more stability and reliability we upgraded to XP Professional when it came out.

[@cata208]

u old shit

[@llcoolray3000]

"Now there's a startup I haven't heard in a very long time." "Do you know Windows Millennium Edition?" "Well, of course I know it. It's ME." 10:50

[@aidancommenting]

"These aren't the Windows you're looking for"

[@Terzaghi12]

Nice

[@2Scribble]

As Maul said to Obi-Wan after he killed his master - let's let Qui-Gons be Qui-Gons

[@TServo2049]

llcoolray3000 Actually, I do not associate ME with its normal startup sound. The company that builds our computers set the startup sound for my ME tower to this loud bombastic jingle that would blow your ears out if you had the speakers up too loud. For years, I believed that WAS the normal ME startup jingle, and the piano jingle was only in 2000. I wish I could find it again...

[@wizkid1]

We use the me startup sound on our usb boot drives at my company. Kinda neat. We also have the windows 3.1 jingle too

[@michaellay7164]

I had that exact same computer! That was also my only experience with ME. This brought back a lot of fond memories for me, mostly of Windows Media Player and its goofy skins. Also some miserable memories. Count yourself lucky that you never used that system restore- it was AWFUL. The whole OS became unstable after using it (if it wasn't already).

[@YouTubePremium-de1km]

Yea system restore was mostly the culprit. I did a fresh install of windows me and disable system restore right away, and it will be as rock solid and maybe even more lovable as windows 98se.

[@Njazmo]

Yeah, it worked fine a while, then it just become so unstable, that you had to do a clean install after some months. Then i got Win2000, which was NT-based, with NTFS (vs FAT), and that was rock solid, happy days.

[@grummpyyounggeek]

System Restore in Me had a bug where it broke after September 14th 2001. So if you broke your system before getting the patch, System Restore would go through all the motions but then finish off with that dreaded "Restore Failed" popup. It was soul destroying to wait for so long as it went through the motions only to find it was all for nought. I was lumbered with Me on the "new" family PC after we replaced a 5 year old Windows 95 system. Worst still, it was a budget system that could just run Me and it was too underpowered to run XP (plus we had a bunch of hardware which wasn't supported). Combine that with the fact my father (the other main user of the PC) was so upset with how much more unstable Me was from 95, he was reluctant to move across to XP. So I had to suffer around 3 years of Me... That was until one day I just bought a new hard drive, upgraded the RAM and installed XP fresh and we moved on. I remember my first day after Windows XP, coming from Me, my first initial reaction was "Why did I suffer for so long!?!" On the flipside, Me has taught me excellent diagnostic and troubleshooting skills as that was what I spent most of my computing hours in Me doing!!

[@mardus_ee]

​@@grummpyyounggeek System Restore was a godsend to me, just in case something happened at the office. But I was good at patching the OS via Windows Update, so I never experienced that System Restore bug.

[@cwf1701]

you don't know bad until you use Vista. If ME was bad, Vista was worse, but what is Funny the best version of Windows (XP) was between the two worst version of Windows.

[@2ExtremeReviews]

Can't wait for "The Windows Vista Experience: Was it THAT Bad?".

[@Anonsage3]

No tbh, UAC was new and people werent used to having to manage security.

[@xtreme350nm3]

I just installed it on an Athlon XP 3000+ with 1GB of RAM and... it actually runs faster on that thing than I remembered. It's not blindingly fast, but I can't describe it as anything other than snappy once it's done booting up. Remove half that memory to keep in line with XP spec (512MB was really common) and it chugs like there's no tomorrow though.

[@dafoex]

Don't forget 8/8.1 and 10 Particularly the Windows 10 upgrade nag that would upgrade the computer upon clicking the red X close button.

[@dafoex]

Anonymous UAC was pretty annoying when it popped up for seemingly no reason. Once you understood why you could forgive it, but sometimes it would pop up for a thing already installed with seemingly no need to access higher system stuff, which would really confuse people at best, and downright annoy them at worst.

[@DosonTheGreat]

@@dafoex Wasn't 8.1 actually not that bad, but it didn't have very good support because poor adoption, because regular window 8 sucked so much?

[@CragScrambler]

"All these terrible windows media player skins, just terrible" Gets me right in the feels.

[@TServo2049]

CragScrambler I still get nostalgic for that fountain visualization.

[@virgenfj]

Winamp: Hold my beer

[@wohlhabendermanager]

@@virgenfj Winamp really whipped the Llama's ass, though.

[@aidancommenting]

AIMP is my favorite because of the conversion tool. I also like the simplicity of the skins

[@usagi67]

NOBODY used the skins (maybe 0.1% of the users).

[@JoeyIgnacio]

Any 90s kid like myself would sit for hours looking at the effects on music

[@hazardeur]

getting high to that shit was an experience for sure

[@Jojje94]

spider's last moment, strawberryaid, dance of the freaky circles..

[@Roanoak]

I would too but I would also search online for all the custom player skins I was obsessed with skins for my computer, For every application I could get a skin for it I had one

[@JoeyIgnacio]

@@Roanoak I was never able to hook up my computer to the internet unfortunately. Only one computer in the house had Internet access, and it was in my parents bedroom.And it was dial up

[@janfischer2844]

Joey Ignacio I’ve managed to do that but I didn’t know what I clicked and my home page became a porn website and I had no idea how to change it, one day I was playing with my little girl friend and when I opened IE she saw the website and I was embarrassed as fuck, thank god she is my wife now.....

[@send2mc]

There were two things I really liked about Windows ME. The first one was System Restore. I didn't realize how good this was until I went back to Widows 98SE and stuffed up a driver upgrade. The second, and much more practical thing, was native support of USB storage. I recently pulled out an my old Win98 and ME PCs. Being able to plug in any USB thumb drive and have instant access to any file in my archives made me use the ME machine much more than the 98 one.

[@fisk0]

Has System Restore ever worked properly though? I last had to try to use it with Windows 8.1 a few years ago. And it couldn't load the restore point, so I had to do a fresh reinstall anyway.

[@send2mc]

@@fisk0 I used System Restore many many times. It was very rare that it didn't work. Windows must be so much more sturdy now because I have only used System Restore once or twice in the last five years

[@thepcuser5469]

Wait so Windows Me isn’t bad?

[@Dman216]

its driver database was wayy bigger then the legacy stuff before it

[@thesteelrodent1796]

I can't recall System Restore ever working properly, but as with everything Microsoft, your success rate depends very much on the individual quirks of each system

[@LazerLord10]

Why can't physical releases have CD's that cool looking!?

[@boheyo]

They can if you're charging $200 for them.

[@diskdem0n]

@@boheyo true

[@dustinlawson5882]

@@boheyo or if the companies that price gouge the hell out of everything they sell cared about customer experience and not just milking us.

[@BillehBobJoe]

@Jay Greentree it also served to show a legitimate copy, sure, pirating windows is bad, but pirating windows and reselling it? thats much worse, no pirated copies ended up on holographic CDs

[@Diwasho]

@@looneyburgmusic But is the $70 copy as gorgeous as the $200 one?

[@thedarkenergy]

I knew the Windows ME key by heart - that's how often I had to reinstall it growing up with two younger siblings.

[@venom74799]

Jesus Christ I did the same thing. Kernel 32 error was my life in college and it was a miracle I got anything done due to it.

[@memescoep8851]

I have the same thing for the windows 95 product key (VMs though)

[@retropcs88]

My windows 95 code is 11195-0000000 00000. And yes, it actually works

[@Kilpe78]

Same with 98se and I still remember it.

[@retropcs88]

@Jimmy S The first field is a manufacture date

[@jmalmsten]

"Unknown has caused a problem in unknown. Unknown is closed" I still remember that oh so informative error message from a friends WinME computer back then...

[@rwdplz1]

At least it told you something closed, instead of just 'Something Happened.'

[@saransds0082]

Better than Windows 10 Error Messages

[@xsc1000]

You can get this error message in every version from Windows 3.X to Me. "Unknown" is displayed instead of missing driver description text. There are also similar versions like unknown has caused problem because unknown was working. I also like error message when printing: Error: Operation completed succesfully. :-)

[@Dragonblaster1]

"No keyboard detected. Press any key to continue" is my favourite.

[@Goabnb94]

"...has performed an illegal operation" Should I call the police?

[@paulojorgetadeu2233]

Hello from Portugal, at the time I upgraded from Windows98SE, as in your video, using the blue box version. I still have fond memories of that system today, which always worked well with an external 56K modem.🙂

[@mfbfreak]

It always makes me feel very melancholic, when you have a fresh install of an old version of windows, and all those new and shiny internet connected programs can't connect to anything anymore. Gone are MSN messenger and all those games.

[@deadturret4049]

Yeah I feel that. The passage of time sucks.

[@turbojoe2]

Heh, I still have my MSN's saved on floppy from 98'. And only on floppy. Because well no one else will figure it out now. Almost no one.

[@terry6131]

I still have Jazz Jackrabbit in my collection, plus me, 98 1/2, 95. OS/2 Warp if your feeling a bit insane. But dumped all the 3.1 / 3.11 floppies

[@turbojoe2]

@@terry6131 Heh, I still have floppy copies of Win 3.11. And they still work!

[@WackyH]

Remember: FARTS-BALLS-FARTS-BALLS-FARTS is a valid Windows Me product key.

[@bradlauk1419]

This made my garbage week just a little happier

[@SecondSunofficial]

@@bradlauk1419 everything ok?

[@CoryDickes]

I kind of want to spin up a vm and try this

[@plaguis1391]

@@CoryDickes it won't work

[@kimikothetanuki314]

@@plaguis1391 you don't know that you dishwashing machine

[@robertleeluben]

I remember some joke ad that went along the lines of "Microsoft is proud to announce the combination of Windows CE, ME and NT... Windows CEMENT"

[@DGTelevsionNetwork]

I found it! kzbin.info/www/bejne/b6PQlqmvbaeSjcU

[@cassandralyris4918]

@@DGTelevsionNetwork OMG that is great. I hope these comments get upvoted for more views for that!

[@murdmart]

Windows CEMeNT - As hard as a rock, and dumb as a brick.

[@matthewrease2376]

I have a pre-setup Windows 3.11 installation in DOSBox and it came with that image. I'm I remember correctly, it said "as hard as a brick, as dumb as a rock"

[@veggiet2009]

It would be interesting to see the boot times comparison on a machine with harddisk. I remember seeing "Me" on computers at the store, but I don't think I ever used it on a computer. My family was happy with 98, until we bought a new computer when XP came out

[@kevin.m213]

The fact that you've got a gateway crt monitor and Roland speakers made my day. This feels just like playing windows 98/ME games when I was younger. As terrible as this OS was with stability I loved it!

[@hueyiroquois3839]

When I first got internet, I had to reinstall the OS about once a month. I thought that the problem was malware, but now I realize that the problem was Windows Me.

[@raketman101]

I had the same, my neighbor couldn't believe it, he learned me everything I knew then

[@Keshro]

@@raketman101 *taught

[@DKCGamerGirl]

I remember having to reinstall Me so much after it would just freeze up on the startup screen that, to this day, I get nervous if any Windows OS takes a longer than normal time to get past the start screen. And the Me startup screen logo just flat out gives me nightmares. I think I must have Windows Me PTSD from it.

[@yizarg]

If you used LimeWire, Napster, etc. it was probably both.

[@DKCGamerGirl]

@Benita Shabibo I remember having to hunt for DLL files for programs to run properly all the time. Such a pain. XD SP2 for XP was such a great update for stability!

[@manley1979]

"This program has performed an illegal operation." - this used to be the bane of IT existence

[@Dumb_Killjoy]

Did you ever see ME have icons and popups from the Start Menu, and programs, stay on the screen and stack? I did on my first day or so of using ME.

[@IAmAnEvilTaco]

User: “I want to play this game” Me: “wait, that’s illegal.”

[@tecc9999]

i wonder who wrote the operating system rules and regulations

[@FireballFlame]

The message that used to scare me as a child was that really dumb "the file may become unusable" warning you get when you try to rename a file and change its extension.

[@bortverde]

@@FireballFlame Isn't this present even in present days?

[@AvianSavara]

Throughout all the negativity and stuff, one thing I love most about this era is how I can satisfy my morbid curiosity about expensive technological artifacts by having some very dedicated KZbinrs like LGR do it for me at no expense.

[@NaokisRC]

To be fair, if you became a patron or youtube supporter, then you can help him to bring your more videos about expensive stuff :D

[@Dumb_Killjoy]

You can run older operating systems on virtual machines. I did that with ME a few years ago and it was horrible (ME, not the VM).

[@angelobrattoli4663]

I upgraded Win 98 to Win 98SE to Win ME to Win XP all with no problem. I liked the multimedia aspects of ME and was able to game on it (3DFx Voodoo 2) with no problem.

[@Dman216]

you missed 2k.. its was great

[@Darkdaej]

Windows ME error message: "Unknown has encountered an unknown error and must be closed. Cause: Unknown."

[@WindowsOnWindows]

Windows 10: "Something happened."

[@elerileigh7926]

meanwhile in linux land: "nothing is happening because nothing is wrong. sure... we don't have the exact program you want, but here's a free open source version that does all of the same stuff... but a little differently... and if you can get used to it, we do pretty good~"

[@nintendoeats]

@@elerileigh7926 I think you are oversimplifying FOSS a bit there, though I certainly appreciate the verbosity of Linux :p

[@EdwardWeissbard]

😂

[@janneboman8573]

Unexpected error

[@materialdialectics]

When I was a kid I uninstalled XP to go back to ME at one point. Wtf indeed.

[@wta1518]

Why?

[@erglwrgl]

Bruh

[@materialdialectics]

@@wta1518 I don't even remember, I do remember the reason I reinstalled XP eventually was because movie maker wouldn't work on ME though.

[@shirkedance]

I have done that .. Removed win xp and went back to 2000 And windows ME. And I preferred win 2000 or 98se over windows xp anyday . . People that say I am crazy don't know that windows xp was very bad without the xp service pack 1 and 2. In fact it was so bad that I didn't install service pack 2 xp on my own pc until 3 years after its release . Win 98se and win 2000 was good enough.

[@billjones251]

I uninstalled xp to put back Windows 95 to get a bird hunter game working.

[@VideoAmericanStyle]

The whole personal-focused “Me” branding was a direct response to Apple’s then-new iMac. Surprised you didn’t mention that!

[@Metal-Possum]

Hold up. Somebody actually thought OS9 had a fighting chance?

[@rockettaco]

Alex Paulsen IDK man. I grew up on OS9 and classic OS X. It was pretty fun. And yes, we had games. And yes, we could unzip things.

[@Metal-Possum]

@@rockettaco OS9 was awful, but what's worse is Apple insisted on saving the NSF formatting of their drives and fudging it into the Mach (BSD) kernel they "appropriated" for OS X. Linus Torvalds (of Linux fame) spoke out rather heavily against such a stupid and inefficient decision. Sure, he's a Linux guy and probably has a bias, but he gives credit to other operating systems where credit is due.

[@damnyousalazar]

@@calebcooper Apple's Mac line was on an upswing prior to the iPhone. Just a few years prior they had switched to Intel processors, and the iPod and iTunes had also brought more attention to the company in the early 2000s. That's relevant because they both worked better with a Mac than Windows, which, in conjunction with colorful hardware and marketing, had made their product line popular with college students and teens as laptops and desktops became the norm in dorms. The switch to Intel also made them a more practical option for the education setting due to improved support and feature parity for Mac versions of software from Microsoft, Adobe, and IBM. It didn't hurt that Vista was somewhat of a disappointment.

[@infernal_monkey]

I genuinely don't remember having any major issues with Windows ME at the time, and I was kinda surprised as the years went by to hear how bad its reputation was! I upgraded from 95 though, so it felt like a gigantic upgrade.

[@bchristian85]

It came out after Windows 2000 and was more of a service pack for Windows 98. Plus, a lot of programs did cause stability issues with it. Windows 9x in general has a lot of those kind of problems. Given how quickly ME was replaced by XP, it should have never been a standalone release.

[@JeffreyPiatt]

Windows ME was 98SE patched with code from Windows NT 5.0, disabled access to real mode MS - DOS basically emulating a NT environment, the first version of system restore and Movie maker

[@ChrissehCat]

When I was in high school in the early 2000s, my parents finally bought a home computer, custom built from a local place. They spent close to 2 grand on it. The guy working there was putting cheap components in/putting less in than was ordered figuring dumb people wouldn't realize it (IE Putting half the RAM ordered in. We caught him with that one) Windows ME had just come out, and that's what we were supposed to get according to the order reciept, but we ended up with 98SE instead. I mean, not a huge deal and probably a blessing in disguise but still. What a conman. He finally got found out but skipped town before they could do anything to him.

[@kaydog890]

Have you thought about a shorty story, or sending this to Hollywood?

[@KARAOTI23]

That's some breaking bad $h!t right there

[@polygondwanaland8390]

I decided to pause and read the article at 2:32 for the laughs "It's an all but mortal lock none of us will need more than 10GB, even for MP3 collecting nerds like myself"

[@rfvtgbzhn]

Yes, it's kind of funny, i know people who had more than this only in mp3s already at that time.

[@GSVRemix]

Heh, I have about 180GB of just audio files (not all are MP3s, but still)

[@DasPlayer2]

"home-brewed JPG photos..." Um, yeah, home-brewed.

[@polygondwanaland8390]

@@GSVRemix I have 47GB of music just on my phone, and that's after transcoding from FLAC to MP3 so everything fits

[@NickBush24]

*laughs in 85.1 GB of music*

[@ArcaneSurreal]

I'm one of the freaks who never had an issue with Windows ME. I used it for a good 3 years; it never crashed, was rock solid, was quick - I even had a GeForce II 32MB 3D card and played the games of that era without so much as a hitch. I'm at a loss as to why so many others had issue with the platform.

[@QJ89]

The two things I remember most vividly about ME: - Playing Trance music with the aqua Night Lights visualisation on WMP7, still one of my favourite programs to this day. - That dumb kid wrecking a PC with a plastic hammer. It surprised me to know that ME was so infamous.

[@RW-cp8gp]

Revenant Same here. Was bummed when I had to upgrade.

[@gmitchellfamily]

Because you and Clint here loaded up ME in a sane way, with real drivers made for 9x. For you see, Me also advertised compatibility with a newer driver model (either the NT stack or something different, can't recall at the moment). Systems that shipped from OEMs frequently used both at the same time. The result was the flaming garbage dump that was most people's (mine included, hello 8 reboots a day) experience with this tragic OS.

[@WintrBorn]

I had no trouble, either. I wasn't building my PC at that point, but it was fine.

[@teemuleppa3347]

i've been blessed for most of my time since 95...only problems i had was with some drives back in those days but never really had any issues with anything else

[@YALE70]

I was too young to remember all the ins and outs of my family's Me machine (a Dell Dimension 8100 to be exact), but I do recall it being the only computer we've ever owned to be utterly crippled by malware (and probably just regular use). I think the PC was only 3-4 years old before we replaced it with two XP towers that went strong until we finally retired them in 2012-2013.

[@stevencurtis7157]

My dad had a computer that came with Windows Me. It accumulated "OS rot" faster than any computer I've ever used. It didn't really seem to cope well with long term use and many programs being installed and removed.

[@sjogosPT]

I had same experience back in the day. Windows me dont like to be messed arround much. 98SE seems more resilient.

[@gex581990]

Yep after we had to reinstall ME 3 times in a month we just ended up using Windows 2000 till XP’s first service pack came out

[@MannyBrum]

By OS rot you mean you never defragmented your hard drive? Because no hard drive keeps its performance after many installations and uninstallations without defragging.

[@stevencurtis7157]

@@MannyBrum No, I do not mean that. ME festered with a deeper evil than mere fragmentation.

[@gordonwelcher9598]

When I ran several programs at once I would get a error about insufficient GDI resources. I liked the new look but I had to reinstall once a month.

[@viewtifuljoe99]

My grandparents' computer ran ME so these sounds are triggering vivid memories right now. Always felt strange trying to navigate it compared to our 98 machine at home and it was a crap shoot at times getting games to work that I'd bring with for the summer as a kid.

[@ddogg14]

My grandparents' computer (an emachines model of some sort) is also the only computer I've ever used that ran ME. I would visit them in the summer and had the same compatibility-related troubles too! 98SE was so much better. We skipped Me at home and upgraded straight to XP a few years later, but I had plenty of experience with this quirky mess of an OS.

[@viewtifuljoe99]

@@ddogg14 At least ME had space cadet pinball for when you get too frustrated trying to troubleshoot compatibility issues!

[@ddogg14]

@@viewtifuljoe99 True! I think I played more space cadet pinball on Me than I did on XP!

[@Marco_Onyxheart]

In Dutch, it was known as Windows Meer Ellende, which means "more misery" or "more calamity".

[@srk93332]

Marco Meijer In Italy it was known as Windows MErda which it means “Windows Shit”

[@NineteenInFrench]

In Thailand, we don't know this version of Windows exists. Probably for the better.

[@jackmcslay]

@@srk93332 In Brazil too, and I suspect the french might have given a similar nickname too

[@SuperHns]

Ja dat weet ik ook nog wel ja.

[@wich1]

Marco Meijer ook wel Windows Meuk Edition

[@scottwinterroth]

I remember upgrading to ME. I actually thought it was a slight improvement. But yeah, nothing major. I also remember buying the upgrade and then being disappointed that it was basically the same as the previous version.

[@manley1979]

We used to call it Windows ME the "Mistake Edition" lol (started my career in tech in 1999 doing Y2K support for Dell lol)

[@ericelsberry5585]

Until windows 8

[@manley1979]

@@ericelsberry5585 Amen brother

[@theKellyG]

I called it Windows Blow ME.

[@justsomerandompersononthei2595]

Eric Elsberry No, Windows 8 is good if you modify it. Meanwhile Windows 10 is awful.

[@haseenabadshah5381]

69 likes lmao

[@thomaseboland8701]

26:27 I think Clint hit the nail on the head when he was talking about how insanely crappy computers and operating systems were in this timeframe. I was an IT manager and we were reimaging Windows 9x / ME computers every six months because of crap. The same was true with Mac OS9. The '90s were really weird this way. It was '80's technology remnants being used well past their "sell-by" dates. Windows 2000 / XP / OSX were light-years better than their predecessors. Vintage gamers (like Clint and his fans) are the ONLY ones who have any love at all for this computer junk. For me, it's nice to see it framed in a cute and nostalgic way. All I remember was lots of work for no good reason. . I have no desire to relive it on an ongoing basis. I have loaded up Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, Win 95, Win98, Win2000 on VM's. The difference between 2K and everything else is shocking. If I were to build up old hardware, it would be DOS 6.22 and WordPerfect only, to create an amazing distraction-free typing system. There is nothing like real hardware and a Model F running DOS only. It's like typing from your brain to the screen with nothing in between.

[@runninggames771]

ok boomer

[@the81kid]

As far as I know, Windows is still using 1980s code and architecture. They paint over the creaking carcass with ever newer and shinier features that nobody ever asked for (transparent applications everyone!). And Win 98 was pretty good, was it not?

[@cheaterman49]

Yeaaah. Nostalgically resolving IRQ conflicts on soundcards... No, thank you.

[@Cooe.]

@@camthesaxman3387 Claiming Amiga OS was more advanced & capable than Windows 95/98 is absolutely fucking ridiculous.... Your blind Amiga-fanboyness is blatantly apparent lol. Amiga fans and moderately delusional obsessiveness go hand & hand lol.

[@cheaterman49]

@@the81kid XP was a blend of NT and 9x, Vista was a rushed release of what Seven would be but AFAIK very much a rewrite to try and get rid of old crud. Permissions closer to UNIX and the likes. 8 even rewrote the UI system, and we all know how it went ; but from all that, I'd say Win10 probably has less legacy code than you'd expect!

[@ImNotADeeJay]

in less than four years: Windows 98 SE - Windows ME - Windows 2000 - Windows XP. Then it took five years until Vista came out.

[@ImNotADeeJay]

@Dave Volsky I skipped Vista altogether, went from XP to 7, then to 10

[@Ryan-hv3kn]

@Dave Volsky Vista ran slow for you because you tried putting it on XP machines. Vista on appropriate hardware runs just as good as Windows 7

[@Walking_Death]

Vista, I'd have a tough choice between that and Me as my most hated windoze version. I bought a brand new thinkpad that came with Vista, less than a week in I downgraded it to XP.

[@lunarmodule6419]

Ya that in itself was stupid. Really for the money. Let's just say it wasn't leaps like 3.x to 95.

[@aidancommenting]

Vista was necessary actually. Windows 7 wouldn't have been as good as it was if Vista hadn't failed in the first place. They needed something to improve upon with 7 or they'd have built it from scratch and it would've been much worse than it is now. In fact Windows 7 is just a simplified Vista, without all the extra features that slowed down Vista so much.

[@bradsmithstudios8881]

My parents were always on the cutting edge always getting the latest greatest hardware and os, my dads first computer was a Tandy in 1984. Your channel is like reliving my childhood.

[@LordSandwichII]

System restore was really thorough. It used to restore everything... ...including all your malware!

[@Ordlnary_Gamer]

and

[@sztywny83]

It means that this feature was working properly. ME was the first Windows with it.

[@freepepsicola]

For an accurate Windows ME experience, you need to run it on a slow, poorly designed and set up OEM machine from one of the big box stores of the time. Much more BSoD fun!

[@OzzFan1000]

The one and only machine (which I was given years after it's shelf-life) that I used ME on was a Gateway 2000 that had a Pentium III 800MHz CPU with passive cooling and no fans in the case. It froze up all the time. No wonder people hated ME; the hardware was crap and the OS got the blame.

[@jongarzamx]

​@@OzzFan1000 Maybe hardware was crap, but Win 98 and 2000 could handle it. Even Microsoft confessed the release was rushed and not properly tested, I remember rumors about how it was adapted from a very early prototype of Win XP that wasn't even close to consumer standards.

[@OzzFan1000]

@@jongarzamx , I would still think that comes down to drivers. Windows 98 drivers needed to be re-written to a new standard and removing all support for real-mode access, which many manufacturers didn't bother to do. I'd wager that given a properly configured system, Win98, ME, and 2k would run fine side-by-side.

[@skyem123]

@@OzzFan1000 That does seem to be what this video shows...

[@OzzFan1000]

@@ah5836 sounds like a precursor to what we have now. An application crashes and crash reports are sent to the vendor to be made aware of the problem and to develop a potential fix if needed. Sounds like Me's attempt was very much "version 1.0" Was Me flawed? I never said it wasn't. I just think it works better than most people give it credit for, as with Vista.

[@firatozcan4051]

Are we all going to ignore the legitimately scary little horror movie he did there using movie maker?

[@aidancommenting]

Actually, he uploaded that masterpiece to LGR Blerbs. Just 2 minutes of quality filmmaking 😃

[@RicoJazz]

To be fair, that video made itself lol

[@JonahBj]

The child and the ominous music, artistic gold.

[@DakinRinone]

... how in the fuck was that "scary"?

[@btizef2008]

Imagine somehow watching that video clip before seeing the main video first like I did 🤣

[@MarianRenta]

When ME came out, all we cared about was getting on AOL and going to our favorite websites to read up on our favorite bands! The chatrooms were where 90s teens like me lived! True, we dreaded the damn blue screens and crawling speeds, and atrocious bug errors, but this era was such a cultural event that we embraced the crappiness. I couldn’t stand how long it took to run a clean install (1+ hour) and how a “clean install” was the only damn solution to every single problem with this nightmare of an OS. Many of us were still using windows 95/98 well after Me came out 😅 It was all we needed to burn our CDs with Roxio, listen to Windows Media Player, and get on AIM 🥰🥰🥰

[@vsevkrawczeniuk8019]

I loved the "Inside Your Computer" wallpaper too... But I just noticed... Why are there vacuum tubes???

[@ThisIsmiXTV]

"It's a series of tubes.."

[@Zizzily]

Cause they look a lot cooler than a bunch of transistors.

[@someguystudios23]

They were assuming you were playing Wolfenstein 3D on the Eniac, lol

[@SeñorDossierOficial]

Steam punk pc

[@screwthenet]

Cause neeeerds :P

[@jagerbolt90]

One day, we all played Space Cadet pinball for the last time without even knowing it...

[@todogenial119]

Just downloaded an xp VM, thanks

[@truefailure6359]

Internal and external crying 😭

[@memenest468]

You can always download VM and then install XP on it, and i bet someone made Space Cadet compatible with W10

[@memenest468]

@@looneyburgmusic Really, i didn't know tbh

[@ilkeryoldas]

You can still play it, works on win 10/11

[@ProtoMario]

Beck

[@hailtothejew1944]

Dont forget weezer and that 3d hovercraft game

[@hailtothejew1944]

Hp WildTangent games, for some reason I enjoyed the racing game demo

[@bellakintgen6736]

BEEEEEEK

[@1994CivicGLi]

joe

[@bellakintgen6736]

@@1994CivicGLi BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK

[@personnel5757]

Thanks so much LGR for your fantastic material - and production quality :) Also your Duke Nukem voice is amazing. You are a true voice actor!

[@blahorgaslisk7763]

I remember a friend who was so happy he was running the latest and greatest in operating systems, Windows ME... When asked about the stability he happily told us ME was the best he had ever used. A few minutes later he told us how he did a clean install of the OS every week to keep it trim... This had me shaking my head as I installed Win95 when I built my computer, upgraded to Win98 when that was released, and then once more to Win 98 SE. And never had I done a clean install over all this time. Sure I was working with support and was quite well versed in the care and feeding of these OS, but it wasn't that hard to keep the system in shape.

[@KuraIthys]

Every week is a bit much. I averaged about 1 reinstall every 2 years for Windows 95 and 98, but I messed around with my computer a LOT. (at some point I was dual-booting NT4.0 with Windows 95) Windows XP I think I've reinstalled about 3 times in 15 years and it's almost always been tied to issues after transferring to a new hard drive. Windows 7 and up I can't say I've ever done a reinstall of (though I did once test it on a laptop I own then uninstall it and put windows XP back on. Nothing wrong with it, but I had gotten that license for my desktop which wasn't ready yet.), and I'm still using a computer from 2010 that runs a windows 7->10 upgrade. Though, that has given me a lot of grief over the years and right now windows update has been broken, and a dozen or so attempts hasn't been able to fix it, so... Might be time... (but I'm building a new PC soon anyway, so... Eh. I'll deal with it later.)

[@bledlbledlbledl]

meanwhile, one of the computers I use at work has XP on it, and it gets rebooted maybe 3 times a year; other than that it's either on or hibernating... well, usually it's hibernating because I use a Linux machine most of the time; XP only when I need to use industrial software that requires windows

[@bledlbledlbledl]

@@Bewefau Back when I used to use win98, I had a DOS utility that could make a compressed backup image of the c:\ partition. If win98 were to crash, or get eaten by a virus, or if I just totally broke it doing silly experiments (none of which happened often) I could reboot to DOS, type one command, and come back 2 minutes later to a fully-restored system.

[@blahorgaslisk7763]

@@KuraIthys I remember one time that I had managed to get a virus on my machine, and it turned out that there were very little information on how to remove it. The automated tools hadn't been updated yet and it kept reinfecting the machine with some kind of encrypted payload that looked different every time. After discovering that this virus it wasn't trivial to remove I toyed with the idea of reinstalling the machine, only to come to the conclusion that after more than five years of use the OS was so modified and tweaked that it would take a very long time to get it back to the functionality it currently had. So I grit my teeth and dug a bit deeper until I was able to identify, defuse and finally rip all it's components out of the system. I think it took me about 6 hours total, but by then I had a very good idea of how it worked. It might have been quicker to reinstall the OS, but then it would take something like six months or more before I'd have it up to speed again...

[@metfan4l]

26:23 Holy crap, that motocross madness clip took me back. I spent entirely too much time back then driving up to the level border and catapulting my bike back. Good times.

[@milklordnomadic]

Same. On Windows ME at that hahaha

[@aidancommenting]

I laughed when I read this actually. Same happens to me when I play MX vs ATV on PS3. Hit the border and I go flying across the map.

[@justinofpreece]

The best part of the operating system! Spent so many hours playing it. I wish there was a copy out there of the game I could get. Worst part of the OS was that I couldnt install iTunes when I got my new iPod in mid 2005, had to borrow a friends laptop which had XP and not update my iPod for a year

[@jackcaver79]

Same here, although I think I only ever played the sequel, Motocross Madness 2. My brother and me played it to death, good times.

[@adam1984pl]

I forget this one even existed,i haven okayed that since like 1999.

[@zombieman81]

Windows Minty Edition was my favourite name I heard for it... A friend of a friend ran it and said it was great... So we asked how often he re-installed it... He said every 3 weeks...

[@aero253]

y i k e s.

[@DerekWitt]

I remember that I refused to get Windows 98 when it first came out. I actually elected to have 95 OSR2 preinstalled on my K6-2-based PC. Looking back, I would have been better off getting 98 or 98SE preinstalled. But it wouldn't have mattered with my POS Diamond Stealth 3D 4000 video card... I skipped over 98 and ME to go with Windows 2000. XP was a joy to upgrade to (even on my Pentium III 933Mhz---after using. a forsaken Celeron 500Mhz). 2000 wasn't bad, but couldn't play many games on that.

[@MoeChicken]

Seeing those classic desktop themes made me feel all tingly inside. I still tweak the heck out of my UI these days because of those themes. Aaaah memories…

[@white56]

"It's now safe to turn off your computer"

[@Steve211Ucdhihifvshi]

I used to love just pulling the plug from the wall on the work machines. Safe to turn off now ya bastard is what id say each time hahahaa

[@user-kf4uh3xw2q]

"it's now safe to turn off your computer" *GO SIT IN THE CORNER*

[@personalsunstreet571]

yeah

[@sztywny83]

Win95

[@hjackson.92]

After I upgraded from 95 to ME, it no longer said it was safe to turn off my computer, the computer automatically shut down.

[@Flextro]

One major benefit for me: ME handle USB thumb drive out-of-box

[@silkwesir1444]

didn't 98SE do that too?

[@Jutah82]

@@silkwesir1444 it needed a driver.

[@Flextro]

@@silkwesir1444 It's work with USB pretty well, but for mass storage it needs 3'rd party driver. Also frequently this driver contain "Safe eject" utility

[@joesshows6793]

ALL LIES!!!!

[@silkwesir1444]

thanks for the replies. I wouldn't have known. The time I got into using USB thumb-drives I was already on Windows XP. Before that, it was CD-Rs and occasionally still floppies.

[@ElsinoreRacer]

I was in IT at the time, lots of small and medium businesses. Very quickly everyone knew the drill: "downgrade" to Win98SE and move on. I recall no upside to ME at the time. If I remember correctly, MS let you install 98 with a ME key. Or something; they made it easy.

[@casecold1864]

Vista was the worst for me, ever LOL.

[@SergeantExtreme]

@@casecold1864 8 was WAAAAAAY worse than Vista. By usage statistics, it's actually the worst version of Windows ever released.

[@casecold1864]

@@SergeantExtreme Ah yeah, you might be right. I skipped Windows 8 so that might have been the reason.

[@geoffwagner4935]

the system restore "Restore my pc to a earlier time". :/

[@wysoft]

@@casecold1864 meh, Vista wasn't that bad by the last service packs. It was basically Win 7 by that point.

[@wiesshund-games]

I never really had any problems with Windows ME It seemed at the time mostly down to picking hardware that had good ME drivers, the win2k UI wasnt bad

[@thepcuser5469]

It’s the same story with vista, that’s why at this point i say windows vista is good and even nostalgic to some extent, I remember running windows vista RTM on XP hardware and it wasn’t that good, when the drivers for vista were available and SP2 came out it was much better

[@dismalfist]

Same here as it goes, no major issues with it back in the day. I think we were the only two! 😄

[@AlexanderVonish]

⁠​⁠@@thepcuser5469indeed, Vista brought many features to the light on what people otherwise was believed to have belonged to Windows 7, almost like twins, though unlike ME, Vista demanded a lot from computers compared to what people had back then (The specs were rather high in comparison to computers that were dominated by XP, and that minimum spec systems would often struggle with it.), while ME was being based off a particularly old kernel (Some calling it 9.X if I remember correctly), vs 2000 being placed on the upgraded NT Kernel, worsened by being sandwiched right before XP was to be launched. Course, The kernel being old could be overlooked if manufacturers interest and updates were to come by, but it did definitely have a short end of the stick on sticking around when its shiny new-to-be successor was around the corner for those that held off. Still, both definitely are holding similarities in their fumbles and issues. While I may not have been able to try out either systems, I can assert they were still quite remarkable, wether due to infamy or misremberance of all the info in the world of them sprawling online, and therefore something to note as Windows continues to evolve.

[@JarrodCoombes]

There two major issues with Windows ME that got it the reputation it had. The first was it absolutely sucked at memory manaagement, there was a major bug in the kernel which meant it never freed up RAM when a program was closed, which ultimately lead a ton of out of memory errors and straight up crashes. Try it on that machine, bring up the free RAM percentage, then just open and close applications and watch how the number slowly creeps up to 100%, especially if you leave it on for a few days. The second issue was some off compatibility issues with AMD CPUs. This would cause the machine to run significantly slower on AMD CPUs that performed about the same as Intel on Win98 and 2k. For me personally the onboard network card in ME ran into many issues with sustained transfers. My broadband connection was slower than dialup on ME, but just fine with 98 and 2k installed. Other than that, it was a minor step upgrade from 98SE, and was ok. People just expected it to be more of a step up from 98SE, after all NT4 to 2k was a huge step up. I am also reasonably sure that is was just a stop gap between 98SE and XP, so MS never really put much effort into improving it.

[@Liggliluff]

Thank you for your detailed description. That surely is a huge issue. People seem to overreact and bandwagon as usually and never state what the actual issue is.

[@MrDuncl]

I ran ME for quite a while. The main thing I remember was continual problems with trying to run two printers (a B&W laserprinter and a colour inkjet). Print on one and there was a very good chance the other one would stop working and would need reinstalling. Once I swapped to Windows XP that never happened again. Bizarrely the Windows 10 WiFi driver on my, still a current model, HP printer stopped working recently and a days research and fiddling hasn't fixed it. In that respect at least with ME a quick driver reinstall would get my printer going again.

[@stoves3]

RAM memory management

[@tc-todoschorros2056]

And general protection faults. Oh man, so many BSODs. "KERNEL386.EXE caused an error in 00AC:18CD" or a similar error that would mean we had to restart the machine. With all honesty, nobody in my family knew much about computers back then, I was a child and my mom didn't know much, and my father was completely clueless, much more than we were. (With the years I have learned a lot, my mom at least knows her way around 95% of the time, and even my dad learned something, although he still doesn't know much). With the years I have realized, too, that we were sold a lemon, a machine that barely could run ME. I remember it was a K6 with 64 MB of RAM and it would crash or have at least one error almost every day. So no wonder why I am part of the legion of people who hate Windows ME. Some features were cool though, like the skins on WMP and the themes it had, but most of the hate is warranted and deserved, I think. Apparently ME was more unstable than its predecessor Windows 98 so maybe that made it even more hated amongst people. A lot of people too, bought a PC because in the late 90's and early 2000's, everyone and their mother were doing it, without having much knowledge or thinking very much about what they were getting into. So many people got potato PCs that were coupled with mismatching drivers (like my dad, I suspect), or just were too weak to run Win ME properly, thus generating the perfect storm of epic proportions that ensued. People may have potato PCs now, but at least they won't crash horribly, complete with general protection errors and kernel panics. The late 90's to early 2000's were indeed a wild west, like Clint pointed out.

[@ltxr9973]

7:56 "This CD-ROM contains a newer version of Windows" It's worded as if your computer had found a mysterious treasure chest in a dungeon.

[@adamgray1753]

The mysteriously treasure found in a mysterious dungeon somewhere would undoubtedly be more well received than just about anything from Microsoft these days.

[@ltxr9973]

@@adamgray1753 Definitely. Windows 2000 was cool though.

[@adamgray1753]

Yeah, it was, @@ltxr9973. Super stable too.

[@Zentauri77]

I remember a joke back from the day. Microsoft combined all the features of it's Windows Versions, Windows CE, me and NT - and called the final product "Windows Cement".

[@thermallance7947]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/oIDLZ4GebdxpnJo

[@ratheonhudson3311]

Ahahaha, that's a perfect joke!

[@LeBoomStudios]

Here's another joke. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually not a joke but insider knowledge. xkcd.com/323/

[@hlavco]

Our first computer was Windows 95 and our second was Windows ME. I was too young to really know the difference, both seemed fine to me. But now, that Windows ME aesthetic brings back major nostalgia. My modern machine is built inside the case of that old ME PC, and the old motherboard is in storage. It still boots.

[@me67galaxylife]

What about the hard drive

[@hlavco]

@@me67galaxylife I haven't tried in awhile, but last time I checked the hard drive was still kicking.

[@me67galaxylife]

@@hlavco that's pretty nice, perhaps one day you will put the thing back together ?

[@hlavco]

@@me67galaxylife Maybe, if I end up with an extra case to use.

[@me67galaxylife]

@@hlavco that would be rad

[@baconchickenforty-two]

all those media player skins are mind-blowingly cool

[@whoismatt]

I remember playing a ton of Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun on a Dell PC running Windows Me. If I recall correctly, the computer had a 10GB hard drive 😂

[@hazardeur]

10gb?? my 486 had a 350mb hd which I compressed to have 512mb....!

[@luisvega903]

Tiberian Sun, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Rainbow Six, Need for Speed,

[@alexandera.1411]

I started with a 5 MB HDD.

[@AnthonyElsom]

@@alexandera.1411 Oh yes, we called those spaceships, I had a 10 mb mfm drive with my pc/xt/at compatible. and ofc., a floppy drive in the other bay..both were noisy critters. 🙂

[@alexandera.1411]

@@AnthonyElsom , mine was ES from Bulgaria, 5"25, which I had to reformat every other day owing to reocurring bad blocks. In a year, I upgraded that to a 10 MB ES (that is a brand). I also had a home 110 lbs printer, D-180. I cannot find any information on that model.

[@danandtab7463]

That’s a good point made at the end. The biggest challenge with early home versions of Windows in general was it was always assuming that the hardware is setup perfectly and nothing sketchy is coming from online. Put that together with so many different forms of hardware and the likelihood of there being some issues increases. Great video! I never had this version because my college insisted on Windows 2000 for students.

[@nickwallette6201]

The ending bit is THE answer, I think. I had no trouble at all with ME. I ran an Asus PII then later PIII motherboard with a 3Com NIC, SB Live, Voodoo 3 and later ATI Radeon graphics, and an Adaptec SCSI card. All top shelf hardware with good driver support. IMO, it was quite a bit more stable than 98, which seemed a little bit on the bleeding edge and held together with duct tape. ME felt quite polished in comparison. I recently rebuilt that old PC and it’s running ME again. Still works great. OTOH, 2000 didn’t work for me at all at the time, because of the complete void of driver support for sound and graphics cards. By the time that situation got any better, we were already on board the hype train for XP.

[@danandtab7463]

2000 was the most boring OS in my experience, probably because it was meant for business. They did a good thing by working on one OS for both home and business, aka XP.

[@WhatAHorribleNight]

I was a teenager when ME came out and my dad bought the Windows 98 upgrade version for our home PC. As a kid who used the computer heavily for all sorts of things from games to schoolwork to print shop and beyond... I never had a problem with it from what I recall. We used it without any serious problems all the way up to summer 2003 when we went to XP. So I was pretty surprised to start seeing Windows ME appearing on "Worst Tech Failures" lists into the late 2000s, I never had a bad experience. My only real complaint would be in the marketing lmao - "Millenium Edition". When I first heard the name, I thought itd be this amazing new space-age Windows overhaul - but it honestly felt and ran just like a slightly updated Win98 from my perspective, which was disappointing.

[@trollsthatlol1]

3:04 >Windows 2000 Server >Up to 64GB of ram I can't imagine how much that'd cost back then especially considering 64gb was more than a lot of HDDs could hold at the time!

[@imchris5000]

servers were hitting 10s of gigs so it was reasonable

[@Ivy-pe2wz]

@@HenriTheHammer There are 3TB+ of RAM desktop workstations being sold nowadays, so you know

[@pootispiker2866]

@@HenriTheHammer *laughs in threadripper*

[@YeOldeKamikaze]

@@Ivy-pe2wz so, three Chrome tabs?

[@MeDuderify]

Had two desktop PC's back in the day running Windows ME...what I remember most about it was the crashes...it crashed at least once or twice a day on each computer. When Windows XP came out I bought two copies, replaced ME and hardly ever had another crash. Hated ME with a passion.

[@GunGryphon]

16:05 That point when you realize that "Billy" is probably graduated from college by now.

[@AlfaGiuliaQV]

Billy should be around 26 y/o by now...

[@dafoex]

From uni with a computer science degree, probably. Breaking things and finding out what broke was how I learned.

[@Baylough.Technologies]

My grandmother was the one who got me into technology when I was younger. I remember going through all her discs and floppys and ALWAYS wanting to play the "Diamond Game". Referring to Windows ME Installation CD 😂 I don't think ME is as bad as alot of people make it out to be. I think it just came at a really weird time right before one of the biggest operating systems of all time .. XP🏆 Awesome video as always brother! Your laugh is the best!😂

[@kens32052]

I remember the joke that went around back then. Windows "CEMENT" CE+ME+NT. lol

[@kymbusby]

i.imgur.com/zh4F55R.png

[@astr0xarthur49]

Kym Busby ?

[@Marckillius]

@@kymbusby Windows Cement - Only for end-users. Quite fitting actually...

[@stephenhornickiii]

"Hard as a rock, dumb as a brick."

[@RWBHere]

And it ran on an Intel Celery Processor....

[@lightningfarronxp8899]

back when I was in high school and having internet in your house wasn't exactly common, I had a friend who got a free computer from a church charity and it had a windows me on it. every day after school a bunch of us would gather at his house and watch funny videos on youtube when it first came out. we also played a lot of flash games, spent time on myspace, downloaded music off limewire and looked at some other things that teenagers look at if you know what I mean lol. even if its not perfect, windows me will always hold a special place in my heart.

[@DarkWiNKenzo]

things that i hated the most about the damn OS was the fact that 5 out of the 10 tries that i would do to save a word document in high school, it almost always crashed XD

[@boheyo]

Where are you from that internet still wasn't common by the time KZbin came around?

[@Chad_Thundercock]

Porn. He's referring to porn. But after all, that's what the internet is for.

[@justmijosh]

Dudeeeeeee ~ I had a really cool grandma growing up who noticed “my love of the computers” and bought me a computer from a church yard sale and it had me on it too!!

[@gravitowl]

@Knobcore i cant imagine that people didnt had internet in 2005!

[@misternewoutlook5437]

It was Vista where the "windows update" era started to come into being in earnest. As a result, if you started with the original Vista (roundly panned in its introduction), the Windows Update ultimately changed your Vista into Windows 7 near the end of Microsoft Support for those operating systems.

[@damienhartley3222]

@MisterNewOutlook: Windows 2000 pro is actually the best NT and DOS option because it was a lot more stable then ME and has a third party sp3

[@Xfade81]

Vista ended up quite decent after service packs. It always ran fine for me.

[@virtualtools_3021]

@@damienhartley3222 2000 had official up to sp4

[@RediffusionMusic]

8:06 - quite neat that it plays the Windows NT 4.0 boot sound!

[@raf9826]

5:57 don't worry dude, no one's gonna steal your windows me key xD

[@woswasdenni1914]

yea convince him, so i can fianlly procceed with the install

[@sanantohomie]

CHINA NO STEAL

[@MultiWirth]

You can get a complete boot cd image containing a dos menu where you can choose between windows me setup, a working cd key and a partition manager. The all in one iso which you can boot on your old pc and just install it. I don´t exactly know where i found this but i guess google will find it. The same exists for 98 se and 95 c. So the OS is more or less free anyways now.

[@garyr7027]

Lol, nope they sure won't.

[@TheTurnipKing]

It's more a protective measure to ensure the unwary don't install it by accident

[@msthalamus2172]

I always felt that Windows Me was the worst of both worlds: all of the instability of 95/98x but with much of the versatility cut out. The inability to exit to DOS and restart Windows without having to reboot the machine twice made DOS gaming extremely cumbersome, yet one misbehaving application could still take the whole system down with it. You also had to edit the registry to make changes that you had always previously made by editing config.sys and autoexec.bat in a simple text editor. That being said, Me introduced a *ton* of largely behind-the-scenes features that would go onto mainstream success in XP, including, most notably in my opinion, System Restore.

[@absalomdraconis]

I remember ME actually being _less_ stable than 95 & 98. I think they had extended the codebase past the point where they needed to implement a complete rewrite.

[@Acoustic_Theory]

Windows Media Player: "At Least It's Not RealPlayer"

[@yaziyo]

Ugh real player. I distinctly remember having to install it in order to open a specific file circa 2003. I unchecked every button that said "open .*** files with real player" but as soon as the wizard finished, all my file extensions now wanted to open with real player. My opinion of the software has not improved since.

[@morantaylor]

And Quicktime player

[@dawnbreaker2912]

OMG, fuck RealPlayer for real.

[@RAD1C4L]

I'm sure I am in the very minority here, but I loved using RealPlayer in the early-mid 2000's, playing my music while browsing the web, even got the Plus subscription thing lol, good times!.

[@wrightcodyj]

oh god, no

[@onceuponatimeonearth]

12:27 oh my god the green head skin just unlocked some hidden memories

[@SethanderWald]

12:59 ah, the good old days when you actually had a choice of whether or not to install windows updates... lol.

[@no1DdC]

@@JPX64Channel It makes a ton of sense though. In order to limit the spread of malware, there has to be heard immunity (just like in the real world with vaccines), which does not exist if everyone and their mums are switching off Windows updates.

[@kennysboat4432]

no1DdC it does and it doesn’t. Some updates break things. Some updates are actually less secure. Some updates remove stuff which is so annoying!

[@notyoursavior78]

That cd was rad AF. Outside of some unique musical cds that is one of the coolest cd designs I've ever seen.

[@OurHereafter]

12-14 years old during Me. I had many late nights playing my anime midis with the headspace wmp skin and playing internet hearts

[@phantom_wolf5274]

Lol

[@assafrecu321]

its a complete joy to see the kind of equipment (GW CRT screen, model-M kbd and Roland - no less !!! - speakers) you are using Clint ! keep up the good work man ! Wish I knew how to get that kind of stuff where I live...

[@Wyldfyre.84]

The nostalgia didn't quite hit from me until I saw the Inside Your Computer theme and color scheme. Then suddenly I was back 20 some years in the past.

[@briandorsey5728]

I love Windows 2000 more than Windows ME, it's more secure than ME, the grandfather of Windows XP, and it's more stable.

[@dersimmler518]

Windows 2000 was my favourite back then. Better for games, better for online stuff, better in general. :D

[@blanchfor]

2000 was great but still had a lot of security patches. I preferred it over xp for a work machine

[@gryphonphillips5669]

HEY BRIAN WHERE'S YOUR PROOF!?

[@robbyandrews223]

Windows 2000 was essentially the first mainstream version of NT. I used Windows 2000 for quite a while.

[@patprop74]

I much rathered Nt over 2000 but i had no real use for either of them, But my BBS buddies were all running NT, maybe that is why.

[@muticere]

LGR: I'll just do the in-place upgrade Every Helpdesk worker watching: RIP

[@suprastevio2264]

Nooooo kidding, this holds so much truth lol

[@crunkybrewster]

I thought the same thing immediately not being an IT guy here. He got lucky from that install

[@alexanderdemontfort3022]

and then Microsoft went and made in-place upgrade the preferred upgrade path for Windows 10 and everyone, long accustomed to the wipe and load still did wipe and load.

[@muticere]

I'm sitting watching this having forgotten that I already watched it until I scrolled down and saw my comment lol. Yeah, at the time I made this comment, we were in the process of upgrading all of our company computers to Windows 10 from Windows 7, so when LGR mentioned doing the "in place" upgrade it caused a stir in my poor heart. Glad that's not my job anymore.

[@slow26gtr]

Windows ME was so unstable for me, it actually got me into the subconscious routine of hitting Crtl+S every millisecond pause as I did any Microsoft Office work. I still do it to this day lol

[@DarkArmedDaddy01]

"The Program Has Performed an Illegal Operation and Will Shut Down"

[@MongooseTacticool]

"Do I need to call a lawyer?"

[@ThePaperKhan]

They got the startup sound going for it.

[@YeOldeKamikaze]

I literally used a diskette to copy the WinME startup sound on my 98SE toaster.

[@nichsa8984]

traditional games retail store getting worse if nanotechnology material moleculary nanomachine more developing

[@poble]

@@nichsa8984 the fuck?

[@30_03-x5o]

@@poble He on x game mode

[@ZX3000GT1]

I ended up using it for Windows 10

[@robobox7595]

One of the main reasons that Windows ME crashed so much is that OEMs reused drivers from Windows 98. Another large reason that it flopped is that everyone knew about Whistler and the fact that it was known to be NT-based must have been a HUGE blow to Windows ME sales.

[@Yeen125]

Robobox The OEMs being cheap and using older crappier drivers is also a big reason why Vista 7 years later became just as unpopular and hated. Especially after the infamous “Windows Vista Capable” debacle.

[@OzzFan1000]

@@Yeen125 , agreed. I bought Vista the day of its release and ensured all my drivers were compatible (bought a new system to go along with it). Never had a single problem with Vista and loved it more than XP. I acknowledge that the over-prompting with UAC can be very annoying, but the OS doesn't deserve it's reputation. The UI interface effects of Vista were very impressive and sharp. I'll take Aero Glass over XP's Teletubbies theme any day!

[@Dustie1984]

@@OzzFan1000 I had Vista too and didn't have any significant issues with it, although I remember upgrading RAM from 2 to 4GB made a really big difference in performance, so maybe that was it

[@Toonrick12]

So ME was Osborned?

[@OzzFan1000]

@@Dustie1984 , Yeah, running Vista in < 4GB of RAM would be a very bad experience. I started off with 8GB on a quad-core build with a discrete graphics card supporting the latest DirectX standards. All it takes is a properly configured system and the experience is vastly different.

[@brickson98m]

Before I get into the video, from what I know it, was frowned upon because it looked like Windows 2000, which was NT based, but was actually still DOS based. I’m excited and curious to learn more from this video! Edit: Oh yeah, I’m with you big time on preferring actual manuals over quick start guides. The best is when there’s both, because if you’re in a hurry and need to get things going, you have the quick start guide. But if you’d like to gain a proper understanding of things before diving in, you could do that too with the full manual. Luckily, now-a-days, with Google constantly at my fingertips, I can get a manual for just about anything in 5 minutes or less. Edit 2: Oh man, I used to love movie maker as a kid. My old Dell Inspiron 1100 would beg for mercy during the export process. I think I still have a copy of the Windows Essentials 2012 version of Movie Maker somewhere. Microsoft removed the ability to download it, but luckily I still had a copy in my downloads folder, so I preserved it. Edit 3: Oh man, you just made a golden ironic humor meme in Movie Maker in like 30 seconds. That gave me a good laugh.

[@SilverSergeant]

Windows ME caused some major headaches for some of us in the software development business. Different systems file locations created a major remapping requirement for our product.

[@Steve211Ucdhihifvshi]

I feel your pain hahahaha

[@DerekWitt]

Sounds as painful as when Windows 95 first came out. I had to support old DOS-based packages. 95 didn't play nice with some old modems and other telecom devices (to connect to mainframes). I once had to install 95 from 13+ floppies. That was a painful experience.

[@seoulpurpose]

"Windows ME, it just works!" -LGR That'll look great as a pull quote on the boxed re-release

[@yakovhadash]

vinyl reissue

[@Alesiopdv]

I remember my mom being really scared for the Y2K and even when we patched our 98 she wanted to get this as soon as possible but I talked her out of it cause evey pc magazine said it was crap so we just waited to get XP later on. It really had a bad reputation even in those days...

[@reconx86]

haha as soon as the knowledge about Y2K became mainstream I just pushed the date to 31 decemeber 1999, 23:59 (on a old *windows 3.1* computer), to see what would happen when it passed year 2000. It was the most uneventful, anti-climatic thing. I really hoped the thing would short circuit and burst into flames or something, but nothing lol (mind you I was just 13 at the time lol).

[@MarSprite]

@@reconx86 People who thought y2k was going to be a cataclysm were pretty funny. Then, in 2001, when they were all "this is the real y2k, mayans predicted the end!" I about died laughing.

[@shodan658]

@@MarSprite and then 2012. I wish the mainstream media would stop pushing silly pseudoscience like star signs and apocalypse dates.

[@sam_rykien]

My family had a 1996 Dell and I needed to upgrade very badly. I picked up a Compaq in 2000 and this OS came with it. I didn't notice how bad it was until a year and a half later when I upgraded to XP. Wow! What a difference.

[@TwistZero]

4:43 "Hmm, I don't have one of those watches here, but I do have..." *Pulls out knife*

[@_x24]

Hearing the sounds and seeing the interface gave me goosebumps. I used to set my Win95 PC up with IE4 to make it look like 98se. The WMP look for me was their "response" to the Winamp skinnable thingy. Gosh those were the days.

[@ThunderClawShocktrix]

I loved WMP versions 7-11 best ones they ever had

[@mardus_ee]

​@@ThunderClawShocktrix Windows Media Player Legacy is a thing in Windows 10, and exists on upgrade to Windows 11. But I don't know if it's there in a vanilla Windows 11 install.

[@m_acg]

Windows ME was an attempt to fill in the "Windows 2000 Home Edition" hole, but not successful.

[@DerekWitt]

ME was a stopgap measure at best. The 9x platform was already past its prime by the time SE came out. ME was the final nail in that platform's coffin. I think the final straw was the removal of real DOS mode from Windows ME.

[@Dj.MODÆO]

Hmm, I know it was a worthless piece of crap that crashed every 60-90 minutes but the wave of nostalgia that hits thinking back to that time is awesome.

[@jthoward]

17:50 it is always weird to see how much of old windows still hangs around in windows 10. The app in 10 to browse those help files (called compiled HTML) is almost the exact same as that one from ME, ofc those files are never used anymore, but its still hilarious that Windows has managed to keep that program around for over twenty years.

[@diskdem0n]

e

[@torterra1826]

*has

[@jthoward]

@@torterra1826 shhhhhh

[@rayproductionsbackupchanne3862]

@Charles Copley tbh that is why teamviewer is a godsent

[@Racecar564]

Pretty sure 'joy.cpl' hasn't been changed since its introduction, even here on my laptop running 11. And on the note of Windows' help, it's pretty absurd how all you normally get on 10 is a Bing search for 'get help on windows 10'. Compare that to XP's help system!

[@Everik-ct6pg]

Don't even dare calling the early 2000's aesthetic ugly. Unironically one of my favorite aesthetics, i love the lighting specifically.

[@Marlyjade]

That pillow shading on everything, and how everything looked like it came from a goopy kids cartoon 😤👌👌

[@DrDingsGaster]

Those media player skins were amazing tbh. I loved using the painting one.

[@boiledpepsi11]

im sorry but aero > any other theme

[@junko4166]

Anything is better than the current corporate garbage we're stuck with right now.

[@DinosaurFan88]

@@junko4166 It's weird and interesting, which is the complete opposite of the iPod minimalist crap that's been "in vogue" for well over a decade at this point.

[@xenaretos]

Strangely enough, what I mostly remember about Me is the file associations editor that allowed you to search by extension instead of the classname. And that was the reason I liked it...

[@doncsicso81]

Maybe it's only me, but I had this after 95 and never really had issues with it... and I had it for 2 years before upgrading to XP.... ah the memories 😢 I miss those days....