Windows Me

Windows Millennium Edition (originally codenamed Millennium and Georgia), also known as Windows Me, is a 32-bit graphical operating system released on September 14, 2000 by Microsoft.

A successor to Windows 95 and Windows 98, Windows Me mainly comprised relatively small upgrades such as Internet Explorer 5.5. It also bundled Windows Media Player 7, which was meant to rival Real Player, the then-dominant media player. (Both Internet Explorer 5.5 and Windows Media Player 7 could also be downloaded for free from the Internet for earlier versions of Windows.) Windows Me also included the new Movie Maker software, which provided basic video editing and was designed to be easy for a home user to use.

The most significant change in Windows Me, however, was that it no longer included real mode MS-DOS. This meant that, unlike Windows 95 and 98, it did not load DOS before loading a Windows graphic shell (which means that it booted more quickly than its predecessors), and also that it could not boot directly into a command-line DOS compatibility mode. It still provided a "virtual mode" DOS which could be run in a window, but some applications (such as older disk utilities) required real mode and would not run in a DOS window.

Windows Me also introduced the "System Restore" logging and reversion system, which was meant to simplify troubleshooting and solving problems. It was intended to work as a "safety net" so that if the installation of an application or a driver messed up the system, the user could undo the install and return the system to a previously-working state. It did this by monitoring changes to Windows system files and the registry. (System Restore was not a backup program.) Unfortunately, System Restore could slow the computer's performance if it chose to checkpoint the system while a user was using it, and since its method of keeping track of changes was fairly simplistic, it could sometimes end up restoring a virus which the user had previously removed.

Users were generally unimpressed with Windows Me. [1] Some claimed that it only deserved to be an upgrade to Windows 98, not a version in its own right; others called it the worst Windows release since 3.0. The notorious instability and bugginess of Windows Me helped to spawn a parody character who personifies its faults.

Windows Me was succeeded by Windows XP, Microsoft's desktop operating system based on the more robust Windows NT kernel (on which Windows 2000 was also based).

History of Microsoft Windows

Windows: 1.0 | 2.0 | 3.x | NT | 95 | 98 | Me | 2000 | XP | Server 2003 | CE | PPC | WM | Longhorn | Blackcomb