Windows Millennium

Development and History

Windows Me, (Windows Millennium Edition, codenamed Millennium) was made for two reasons. The first, was down to it's planned merger of the Windows 9x and Windows NT product lines. This was supposed to materialise shortly before Millennium, but it was pushed back two years to Windows XP. Windows ME was, at it's heart, based on the Windows 98 kernel. However, it was also classified as a 'stopgap' release to tide people over until Windows XP hit the shelves. Subsequently, Windows Me incorporated elements from the Whistler project, as it was known at the time, and such elements like System Restore found their way into Windows Me. Real-Mode MS-DOS drivers were also removed; the most visible side-effect of this was now being unable to shut down Windows to an MS-DOS prompt.

System Requirements

• 150 MHz Pentium Processor or equivalent
• 32 MB RAM
• 320 MB Hard Disk Space (FAT16/FAT32)
• CD-ROM Drive (Network Install is not supported)
• VGA-capable graphical system
• Keyboard

System Requirements for the bundled Windows Movie Maker

• Pentium II Processor or equivalent, running at 300 MHz or greater.

For other activities, such as DVD Playback, specialist hardware and/or software is needed, such as an MPEG2 Decoder.

Features

• Windows Movie Maker
• System Restore
• Internet Explorer 5.5

Criticisms

Windows Me disabled Real Mode MS-DOS support, making the system unable to shut down to an MS-DOS prompt, like Windows 95 or Windows 98 could do. While booting into the prompt was still possible by creating a boot disk or using a third party patch, it was not convenient to do so.

Windows Me was also touted as a whole new release of Windows. In reality, it was almost identical to Windows 98 Second Edition, but the Windows 98 kernel did not stand up well to having elements of what were later to become Windows XP integrated into it. Thus, many users were annoyed at having to shell out, at full price, what was was at best, an upgrade. Windows Me was purely designed as a stopgap release, with a limited lifespan, to make sure there was a new Windows release prior to Windows XP.

Windows Me also had a rather blatant System Restore problem: After September 8, 2001, the Datestamp would be incorrectly marked, and thus, with Windows Me unable to locate any System Snapshots after that date, the System Restore Process would fail. This was fixed in a hotfix, but the system needed Internet connectivity to receive such an update.