How did you install the VMware virtual machine at the bottom? It is working fine with VMwareFusion12, but from other isos it fails. Likewise, when I export it from VirtualBox with ova, it does not start with vertical stripes on the screen.
Windows Me was far from being an example of stability, but the crappy hardware of the time certainly didn't help one bit. This is why it's so well-behaved in hypervisors: no legacy/poorly written drivers, no esoteric hardware, no "clever" BIOS hacks to work around hardware/software bugs etc. VMs almost make all of those BSODs feel like a false memory but it's not, I had to deal with it running on bare metal and it was *not* fun.
Have this OS installed on a Socket A machine with a AMD Duron 700mgz running at 770mhz and it runs without fuss. Doesn't blue screen or anything. I wonder if this is because the system I have it installed on is from the era the OS was likely written for? Anyway glad I tried it. I tried it before on later hardware and that did blue screen all the time!
Now that I think about it, Windows ME is one of the transitional OSs to move to Windows XP, i.e., NTFS-based. At the time, it required somewhat high specifications and took up a lot of resources compared to 98, so blue screens were frequent. .
Interesting that you only post screenshots of Bluescrens :-D By the way it was always named "Windows Me", not "Windows ME".
@ibmpc5150: Windows Me didn't require more compared to 98, but it was incomplete and a strange version of WIndows kicking away some DOS parts like CONFIG.SYS but still using the DOS kernel and so bringing absolutely nothing new. It was a stupid release. NTFS is just one thing of the NT-based WIndows, the important thing is the kernel with its strict modern object manager and strict hardware seperation. And all that is simply not existing in Windows Me and all DOS based WIndows systems, every program was able to do anything they want and THAT made them unstable and completely unreliable.
Only bluescreen screenshots. Very original but signifying what Me was. Anyways, to give credit to Windows Me, it is much easier to install and setup on an emulator.
Looks like the retail full ISO is non-bootable? I've tried burning it onto multiple DVDs and CDs, and it does not boot. Even Rufus says it's non-bootable.
Retail 95 and 98 CDs were also not bootable. This is because many computers could not boot from CDs and/or required different DOS drivers.
You might think Microsoft would have put their foot down and required standard IDE drives, but since this was the end of the DOS based Windows, they probably just didn't bother changing it.
Added a note about that.
If there are any actual issues with the ISO, please let me know.
Comments
It is working fine with VMwareFusion12, but from other isos it fails.
Likewise, when I export it from VirtualBox with ova, it does not start with vertical stripes on the screen.
@ibmpc5150: Windows Me didn't require more compared to 98, but it was incomplete and a strange version of WIndows kicking away some DOS parts like CONFIG.SYS but still using the DOS kernel and so bringing absolutely nothing new. It was a stupid release.
NTFS is just one thing of the NT-based WIndows, the important thing is the kernel with its strict modern object manager and strict hardware seperation. And all that is simply not existing in Windows Me and all DOS based WIndows systems, every program was able to do anything they want and THAT made them unstable and completely unreliable.
https://archive.org/details/X06-02814
https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-windows-boot-disk/me
Or:
https://archive.org/details/winmebootdisk
I am aware of 2 different bootable disks for ME: the one linked above, and the other is an emergency boot/repair disk.
https://archive.org/details/windows-me_20240808
Above is a collection of Windows Me tidbits.
I've attached a copy of that page in mhtml format.
You might think Microsoft would have put their foot down and required standard IDE drives, but since this was the end of the DOS based Windows, they probably just didn't bother changing it.
Added a note about that.
If there are any actual issues with the ISO, please let me know.