Windows ME released June 19, 2000

Windows Millenium Edition, or Windows Me or Windows ME, was released June 19, 2000. It was the successor to Windows 98 SE and Microsoft’s least successful operating system since the late 1980s. It was Microsoft’s last operating system based on MS-DOS.

The last 16/32-bit hybrid Microsoft OS

Windows ME was the last of its generation. Microsoft went out of its way to hide DOS in Windows ME, to the point where it took some serious hacking to expose it. But ME was still a 32-bit GUI running on top of a 16-bit kernel. Windows ME was Windows 98 with better plug and play, better-hidden DOS roots, and a lot more bugs. But from a technology standpoint, it was pretty much just warmed-over Win95. There was as much difference, if not more, between Windows XP service packs as there was between 95, 98, and ME.

Windows ME’s original plan

Microsoft intended for Windows ME to have a short shelf life. The goal all along was to get a consumer-oriented version of Windows based on Windows NT to market. But Windows 2000 was delayed and while it was fine for business, it wasn’t quite ready for home use. Rather than further delay Win2K, Microsoft chose to release ME to buy time until the operating system that became XP was ready to go.

Windows ME was a bit of a rush job, and probably could have used at least another six months’ worth of testing and debugging. But if Microsoft had done that, then consumers would have just skipped ME and waited for XP. Microsoft could have just skipped ME entirely, but that would have meant missing out on a lucrative upgrade cycle. Selling operating system upgrades was still a lucrative business in the year 2000.

So Microsoft released a half-baked ME, whose improvements over 98SE were incremental at best, and in practice was less stable than its predecessor. And what happened? People figured out it was bad and they ignored it. Either they stuck with 98SE until XP was ready, or they ran Windows 2000 and put up with its imperfect compatibility. Either option was better than running ME.

Jeremy Spencer, the editor of Computer Shopper UK at the time, contacted me and ask me to figure out how to dual-boot ME with 98SE and then write an article about it for him to publish. He hated WinME and figured his readers would too.

I only knew one person who liked WinME. My boss from 2005 to 2009 bought it on his recommendation and he was still making snide comments about him in 2009, nine years after the fact.

I found my old blog post capturing my first impressions of Windows ME. My first impressions weren’t bad because I immediately tried things that made 98 and 98SE struggle. But as I tried things 98SE was good at, those initial impressions faded.

What was good about Windows ME

Windows ME was supposed to deliver a souped-up disk defragmenter, better plug and play, and better stability. The defragmenter was better. It had a bit more intelligence and was much more tolerant of multitasking. The plug and play was better too, especially with USB devices. With 95 and 98 and even 98SE, plug and play usually worked, but you’d occasionally get mysterious conflicts that could take all weekend to sort through. With ME, it pretty much worked as expected. You’d plug in the device, Windows would load a driver and configure it, and stuff just worked.

The better stability was more of a broken promise. If you ran well-behaved 32-bit applications, Windows ME may have been slightly more stable than 98SE. And if you were just running well-behaved 32-bit applications, you could probably just run Windows 2000 instead. But most games ran much better on 98SE. And that was the target audience.

Gamers who wanted the latest and greatest bought ME, ran it a few weeks, then reinstalled 98SE and cursed Microsoft because they’d wasted 80 bucks. Casual users who could potentially benefit from ME were the most likely to just stick with what they had. Power users would run 2000 instead. It was Microsoft’s biggest misstep since MS-DOS 4.0.

Windows ME soiled Microsoft’s reputation after a nearly 12-year run of successful operating systems. Windows ME was one of Microsoft’s shortest-lived operating systems, if not the shortest. But it only had one job, to buy time. I guess it succeeded? But the other thing it did was start a pattern of really bad Windows releases followed by good ones that lasted more than a decade. Depending on who you asked, Windows 98SE was good. ME was bad. XP was good. Vista was bad. Win7 was good. Win8 was bad.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.