I'm running an older hard disk for problems. There is no hard disk. This is running off of SD cards. I've got a SCSI2SD installed in here, which is nice because I don't plan on keeping this running Millennium Edition after this, so I can just swap back to a Windows 98 SD card. I've got them cloned and everything, so I actually just swap them out all the time.

Behind the scenes stuff. Windows just got better. It helps you get the most out of your computer by providing the best in digital media and improving user experience enhanced networking and rich internet. It's they were hyping those four aspects in particular constantly and all the marketing that I've been looking up here recently. It's fascinating though because a lot of those enhancements were actually available on Windows 98 SE without the need for Millennium Edition even though, I mean you know they're advertised right here in the back of showing like Windows Media Player 7 for instance and talking about Internet Explorer 5.5 both of those were available as free updates, free downloads from Microsoft online for 98 SE. You didn't need Me for that and that led to a lot of people again just looking at like old user reviews and journalists and stuff to believe that you really didn't need an upgrade to this.

It wasn't worth upgrading because the most attractive features like Media Player 7 and IE 5.5 and MSN Messenger was a big exciting thing that Me came with. Those are all available in 98 so why would you upgrade? Well, but you know you had other things that this came with that weren't available on 98 SE at least not that I know of. Like Windows Movie Maker. That was a big deal man. I know I loved messing around with that. In fact, I believe MovieMaker was my very first video editor of any kind.

Oh it's restarted. There's a more familiar looking Windows setup, setup. At least visually. Alrighty I believe that was it. So we'll see if it works. First boot here about half an hour later. Oh that splash screen. I feel like I need a crucifix. Now there's a startup I haven't heard in a very long time. Wow, it seems like everything is working. I was expecting at least one thing to maybe need to be installed or whatever, but nah man, it's just straight up working.

I do have like the latest drivers for my Aureal Vortex sound card and the Voodoo 3 graphics card. I was wondering because I have two sound cards in here and AWE64 gold and the Vortex 2. I have the game port disabled in that one and it's enabled on AWE64 and it kept that too. Like everything is in here working perfectly. It looks like so far I'll be honest, that is a bit of a surprise. I was expecting at least one or two drivers not to be okay, but, and we've got some extra things.

So we've got the new Media Player 7 here. Oh man, haven't seen that in forever. Oh, got to stop that 'cuz copyright, I forgot that it played Beck. Look at all this like the skins and crazy stuff just extraneously popping out everywhere. I need a higher resolution. Huh, I can't. Well why not? Okay, so there we go. I made the monitor the VX700 by Gateway here. So now you can actually change that to 800x600, good stuff.

So now we can get all the full nonsense of Media Player 7 here. It's bringing back so many weird memories immediately. All these terrible skins and such, oh, headspace. There's a classic of like, yeah, new millennium kind of aesthetic, what in the world? All these terrible designs. The eyeballs, oh man, look at this. Just look what in the world the whole design language at the time period UI/UX was just a nightmare.

But it's kind of oddly appealing in a retro futurism kind of way. We got Windows Update. Ah yes, this was a new thing and just have it connect the straight to here, you know and it would download things every day if you want it to and keep your Windows updated and instead of having to go to a website and download individual files or whatever, which is probably what I will do if I end up updating this 'cuz I am not gonna connect to the internet just copy files over and I'll see.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enGreetings and welcome to an LGR thingabout Windows Millennium Edition.Yes, it is time to dive into thisand uhh...and see if it really was'better living in the digital world.'You know, this is afascinating product really,and despite my own mixedpersonal experiences with it,just looking back at thisthing's release, its receptionand its 20 years of people deriding it.I mean, it's just become oneof the most often malignedand highly criticizedMicrosoft operating systemsand tech products of all time.Whether that's completely deserved or not,let's hopefully figure someof that out in this video.But yeah, either way,Millennium Edition has appearedon so many different lists ofthe worst tech products everand things like that over the years.And it's become the subjectof memes, the butt of jokesand is often called somethinglike Mistake Editionor Major Embarrassment orMultiple Enemas or whateverpeople wanna say thatMe actually stands for.The ongoing narrative beingthat it was so bad that it ledpeople to move on to Windows 2000 or,just downgrade to a Windows 98SEor not even bother changinganything with their OSat all, especially sinceWindows XP was just aroundthe corner in October of 2001.This came out in well, itwas released to manufacturingin June 19th of 2000 andactually hit store shelvesSeptember 14th, 2000 meaningthat it remained currentfor a little over ayear and that was that.Now as for my own personalthoughts as to whetheror not this was reallyas bad as everyone says.Well, to be honest, at thepoint I'm recording thisat this very moment, I haven't used itin at least 18 years I had iton my Compaq Presario 5000USit came pre-installed on there.I used it for a year, maybe two I believeand it just got so unstableat that point that I didactually downgrade toWindows 98 Second Editionand that worked a lot better,at least in my recollection.I don't actually know of the specificsof what was causing the instability.Either way I was not a fan of it back thenand I've always had lingeringfeelings about Me ever since.And yes, it is officiallypronounced 'Me' just the wayit's spelled there.You'll often hear it said 'M.E.'and as far as I'm concernedthat's legitimate as well.But if you look at oldarticles and the pressand such, you've gotjournalists and Microsoft repswere repeatedly making the point backthen that it was meant to besaid 'Me' for better or worse,and the marketing reflected this.There were lots of 'Meet Me'ads and 'Me is the operatingsystem for Me' and things like that.It's still an initialismstanding for Millennium Editionof course, but the PR really wanted to tryand differentiate it from Windows 2000because that was anotherbeast entirely soldat the same time.And it was really meant forbusiness and enterprise users,a proper successor to Windows NT 4.0whereas Millennium Editionwas meant to be the next bigmainstream consumer operating system.And originally it wasactually gonna be basedon the NT kernel and filesystem like Windows 2000 was,but for many multiple reasonsit ended up being the finalWindows built on top of MS-DOSand there are severalvideos going more in depthas to why this happened and the detailsof the development of it.In fact, there's one by ScienceElf I watched not too longago, I recommend that. Butright now I'm more interestedin seeing whether or notit really was the bestin digital media andimproved user experience,enhanced whole networking anda rich internet experiencecompared to Windows 98SE.Plus I have this big boxversion here of the fullcomplete edition of Windows Millennium.Something I didn't getuntil recently becausethis has oddly enough,become somewhat hard to find,especially sealed and incomplete in box like this.I've never opened up one of these,I never had it myself back in the day.Like I said, it came with myCompaq and as far as I can tellthat's the way most peoplegot Millennium Editionand was actually justa pre-installed thing.Otherwise, there werethree different versionsavailable at retail.A $60 limited edition forupgrading Windows 98SE,a $110 upgrade edition for Windows 95and 98 first edition users,and the $210 full versioncomplete in the box with all the goodiesas we have right here.And this is also one that ifyou bought it from CompUSA,then you'd get a limitededition Windows Me watchwith the purchase of oneof the first 25,000 unitssold at those stores.Well, I don't have oneof those watches here,but I do have the originalpackaging, so yeah,let's just open it up andsee what is packed inside.I mean, I'm pretty sure we all knowit's gonna be operating system stuff.Microsoft didn't exactly go crazywith their boxed OS contents.Still though, I'm curiouswhat is contained.There goes the seal, all right.Imagine paying $210 in the year 2000and this is what you get, man.Look at that.You get that hologram disc.The way this is worded amuses me.The product ships with anadvanced hologram technology.I just imagined like Tupacpopping out of the box.Yeah, oh man, I have neverseen a Windows MillenniumEdition disc in person andhonestly that looks fantastic.I'm legitimately impressed,that looks so much coolerthan any other version of Windows I have.Honestly, that's legit.A product's key on the back thereand not a whole lotelse inside as expected.You got a nice little WindowsMillennium Edition boot disk.It's always cool they includethis for a couple of reasonsactually for this version of Windows.And we've got a slip forAmerica Online Gold version 5.0.Try it for 500 hours free.Indeed, yeah.The fact that you'd pay $210and then still get advertised AOL...Anyway, Microsoft! And wegot the quick start guide.It's a bummer that it doesn't comewith any kind of actualmanual or full documentationor anything, but you know what?That's just what theywere doing at this point.One of the things they were pushingthough was the interactive help system.It was supposedly much more improved.I mean it was improved overwhat came with like Windows 95and 98 but yeah, this really it's justa quick startup guide.Sobasically telling you the basicsand that's that, man, rant over.I just don't like quick start guidesand prefer actual manuals.But anyway, this is allyou get inside here.Let's get this delightful-lookingCD installed on the LGRMegaluminum Monster, which iscurrently a Windows 98SE PCbut I guess now it's gonnahave Millennium Edition on itand at least for today.All right, got the LGR Megaluminum Monsterhere ready to go and next time we see itit will be booted into Windows Me.Let's get this CD in here.The CD-ROM contains anewer version of WindowsMillennium presently using.Would you like to upgrade it?Yes!I mean we don't have to do it from here.We could just reboot and do thingslike that, but yeah, why not?I'm gonna try the, oh there's music.Sort of.Yeah I'm just gonnatry the upgrade versionof this first.Just taking 98SE and upgradingto Millennium Edition.See how that goes.I've read mixed results mayoccur so that could be funand if it's a complete disasterwe will try a clean install,but upgrade is first.Welcome to Windows Me set up.Congratulations on choosingWindows Millennium Edition.I'm not sure if I choseit or if you guys chose itby requesting it for years but anyway,There we go.Now checking my hard disk for problems.There is no hard disk.This is running off of SD cards.There's a SCSI2SD installed in here,which is nice becauseI don't plan on keepingthis running Millennium Editionafter this, so I can just swapback to a Windows 98 SD card.I've got them cloned and everything,so I actually just swapthem out all the time.But anyway, behind the scenes stuff.Windows just got better.It helps you get themost out of your computerby providing the best indigital media and improveuser experience enhancednetworking and rich internet.It's they were hyping those four aspectsin particular constantlyand all the marketingthat I've been looking up here recently.It's fascinating though becausea lot of those enhancementswere actually available onWindows 98SE without the needfor Millennium Edition even though,I mean you know they'readvertised right here in the backof showing like WindowsMedia Player 7 for instanceand talking about Internet Explorer 5.5both of those wereavailable as free updates,free downloads fromMicrosoft online for 98SE.You didn't need Me for that and that ledto a lot of people, againjust looking at like olduser reviews and journalistsand stuff to believethat you really didn'tneed upgrade to this.It wasn't worth upgradingbecause the most attractivefeatures like Media Player 7 and IE 5.5and MSN Messenger was a big exciting thingthat Me came with.Those are all available in98 so why would you upgrade?Well, but you know you hadother things that this camewith that weren'tavailable on 98SE at leastnot that I know of.Like Windows Movie Maker.That was a big deal, man.I know I loved messing around with that.In fact, I believe MovieMaker was my very first videoeditor of any kind.Oh it's restarted.There's a more familiarlooking Windows setup, setup.At least visually.Alrighty I believe that was it.So we'll see if it works.First boot here about half an hour later.Oh that splash screen.I feel like I need a crucifix.Now there's a startup I haven'theard in a very long time.Wow, it seems like everything is working.I was expecting at leastone thing to maybe needto be installed or whatever, but nah man,it's just straight up working.I do have like the latestdrivers for my Aureal Vortexsound card and the Voodoo3 graphics card.I was wondering 'cause Ihave two sound cards in thereand AWE64 gold and the Vortex 2.I have the game port disabled in that oneand it's enabled on AWE64and it kept that too.Like everything is inhere working perfectly.It looks like so far I'll be honest,that is a bit of a surprise.I was expecting at least oneor two drivers not to be okay,but, and we've got some extra things.So we've got the new Media Player 7 here.Ooh, how exciting.Oh man, haven't seen that in forever.Oh, got to stop that 'cuz copyright,I forgot that it played Beck.Look at all thislike the skins and crazy stuffjust extraneously popping out everywhere.I need a higher resolution.Huh, I can't.Well why not?Okay, so there we go.I made the monitor theVX700 by Gateway here.So now you can actually changethat to 800x600, good stuff.So now we can get all the full nonsenseof Media Player 7 here.It's bringing back so manyweird memories immediately.All these terrible skinsand such, oh, headspace.There's a classic of like, yeah,new millennium kind ofaesthetic, what in the world?All these terrible designs.The eyeballs, oh man, look at this.Just look what in the worldthe whole design languageat the time period.UI/UX was just a nightmare.But it's kind of oddly appealingin a retro futurism kind ofway. We got Windows Update.Ah yes, this was a new thingand just have it connectthe straight to here, you knowand it would download thingsevery day if you wantedit to and keep your Windows updatedand instead of having to go to a websiteand download individual files or whatever,which is probably what Iwill do if I end up updatingthis 'cuz I am not gonnaconnect to the internet,just copy files over andI'll see desktop themes.This is also something thatcame with a lot of themfrom like Plus!, which I thinkI had installed on here already.So I don't even know which ones were newbut yeah, all these like classic themes.Man I loved \"Inside YourComputer,\" I mean, who didn't?Yeah, all those soundsAnd yeah, like I said thesewere on 98 as well, so.But it came with a bunch of them.And this one is the, I guess.Oof. What in the world.Too many sounds, just nonsense.Yeah, scanners and cameras.This was a new thing as well'cause you could just likeadd devices right here.I remember that being muchmore convenient than 98SE.There was also some things in the task barand like just regular menus.Yeah, like a lot morecustomization options as wellas like, yeah, this 'personalized menus.'I've never liked this.You could have it just --well that's not gonna doit cuz it's a freshinstall, but -- only pop upthe individual thingsthat you use the mostin the Start Menu. I don'tlike that, never have.There was also like, auto complete.Yeah so that was a thing.It was like, oh man, youdon't have to like necessarilyremember exactly what'son your hard drive.You can just auto complete things.Whoa you've got Duke 3D in here somewhere?There it is!That was exciting at the time!Also came with some new gameswhich I always appreciated.So you have the internetgames, so internet backgammonand checkers, hearts, reversi, spades.Those were all new in Millennium Edition.Of course you got to be online and playthrough the MSN Gaming Zone thing.Spider Solitaire was also new,timeless classic right there.or so it became, right?I don't remember how to play this.And you got Classic Solitaire.It's now called justjust Classic Solitaireto differentiate it.And then of course...you can't knock it for having3D Pinball Space Cadet.Again, this is includedin some of the versionsof plus before this andof course it was includedin XP later on, but yougot to give any propsfor including a classic for the first timeby default in Windows.Wow, that was afwul.Ah, Windows Millennium Edition Preview.We'll see you when is this?Ooh shockwave, it's just a video, yup.I had those exactspeakers... The year 2000.I've got a couple of those cameras too.Recover from problems easily.If a kid is smashing thecomputer with a hammer.Oh that Billy, ruining computers.Yeah, system restore.I never used this on Windows Me, ever.It doesn't even have any restore pointsbecause we just installed it, but still,I don't think I startedusing this until XP.So let's just create a point.When I was reading, some folksweren't necessarily a fanof it at the time because notonly did it seem to bug out,but it took up a goodchunk of hard disk space,like 150, 200 megs orsomething per restore point.And running things in the backgroundand slowing down the computer.So you ended up getting slowerperformance than Windows 98but never go created a restore point.Check out that new Helpand Support System.Yeah, this was pretty advanced mancompared to what Windows 98 had.It's like a full on Encartaencyclopedia kind of design.Very HTML-centric.I'm sure some folks took advantageof it, especially since thisdidn't come with a manual.Dang it. Ah, here we go.Windows Movie Maker.Look at that.Whoa.Okay, music for every... yup.Do we have anything to import?There's a sample file, so that's good.Oh, look at these.It automatically made those clips.Oh, that was the best quality.Ooh.Okay, so we can edit thistogether and let's put that righthere and then we'll do a Beck bitmap.Put that right here in portI guess we can just do wave files.Yeah, we'll add some,add some sound effects.Gonna be the best video.I don't believe this oneactually lets you put like statictext boxes or anythinglike that in this one,I may be wrong, I dunno, butI'm not seeing that anyway.Oh, I'm gonna save that movie.Highest quality, which is what? 256 kbps,396K file size.Saving it as a Windows Media Video file.Look at that encoder go.Ah, magnificent.Yes, watch it now.An editing masterpiece.Yeah on retrospect, Idefinitely use the Mediaor, Movie Maker in XPmuch more often than this.This is 1.0.13760, ooh.And of course one of thebiggest changes is the factthat there is no longer MS-DOS mode.I mean it's here, this isstill built on top of DOS,but they straight up hid itand you'd have to re-enableit through ways, it wasn'tactually long at all beforesome folks online and journalistsand whatnot were sharingmethods of restoringthe MS-DOS functionality oryou know, making it easierto access because it's still here.I mean, you've got to MS-DOSprompt so you could like runthings that don't requirereal mode for instance.But like, I mean that waspretty much it because it tookaway the real mode stuff.So it definitely broke certain games,but others worked perfectly fine.Yeah, Jazz JackRabbit, it works.Then you have games like Epic Pinballthat aren't ideal running under Windows.You get some like weirdchoppiness with the scrolling.Yeah, I never liked that.So yeah, if you could runthat under like DOS mode,then that'd be great.Normally you'd just be able to go in hereand create like a PIF or whateverand you just tell it to go inDOS mode but it's straight upnot even an option anymore.Duke 3D though, I meanyou know, that works.So it's all you need.- Let's rock.Die.I'm killing you withWindows Millennium Edition.It's pretty deadly.Still, despite a lot ofmy favorites working fine,there's a number of games and programsthat just won't work properlyor at all without DOSrunning in real mode.Not a problem in older versions of Windowswhere you can just restartan MS-DOS mode at any time.No such luck in Me though.So as for getting that to work,there are a few wellknown methods I tried out.First is writing a boot diskor just using the oneMillennium Edition came withwhich you'll boot into a menuletting you select Windowsor DOS mode either withor without CD-ROM support.Same as you could onWindows 95 and 98 and such.This is definitely the easiestway to access DOS mode in Me,MS-DOS 8.0 in this case.Now you won't have Sound Blasteror mouse support yet, but Iimagine amending the disk'sautoexec and running theneeded TSRs is an option.Next up I tried ManifestDestiny's Real ModeDOS Patch version 1.3, somethinghosted all over the webback in the day and evengot a write up in InfoWorld Magazine in October of 2000.It's a simple patcher programwhere you copy three differentWindows system files intoone folder, run the programand it'll modify things so you're readyto overwrite the originals.Add a couple lines toconfig.sys and autoexec.batand that's that.Basically this tricksWindows Me into thinkingit's always running aboot desk no matter what,which is somewhat annoyingpersonally but it does work.The last one I tried isDOS Fix Me version 3.0from Overclockers Australia,supposedly the lastand best version from them.In contrast to the manualnature of the other methodsthis one presents you witha comparatively nice menusystem, letting youapply and undo the patchas well as disabled,potentially unwanted featureslike PC Health and System Restore.Unfortunately, it didn'tseem to work for me at all.Completely messing up awhole load of system filesto the point where the undodidn't work and the systembecame unbootable. Whatever man.Even if it did work, itstill wouldn't restorefeatures like being able totell DOS program informationfiles to boot a program in real DOS mode,or enable restarting in MS-DOSmode from the start menu,each of which I use all thedang time on Windows 98SE.So yeah, even with the patchesand workarounds, Windows Mesimply isn't theoperating system of choiceif you need a proper DOS.Again, the majority of gamesI've tried work just fineunder a Windows DOS promptat least as well as they dounder Windows 98 betterthan I remember honestly,but it's just not idealif you have the choice.What about the Windows side of gaming?After all Windows Me is a flavor of 9x,so anything designed for95 and 98 should workjust as well, right?Well maybe. Something Iran across in my researchis that Millennium Edition isconsistently slower than 98SEeven using the exact same hardwareand drivers when runningcertain games and benchmarks.So I figured I'd run a few myself.Starting with the lovely Unreal Tournamentfrom Epic Megagames.I've just got this running a time demoon the intro sequence at800x600 resolution, vsyncdisabled, and 16-bit color,since this is running a 16 megabyteVoodoo3 graphics card. Same driversand same direct X7, sameeverything between me and 98.And at first glance theylook pretty darn similar.But the final numbers revealthat 98SE ran the gamesslightly faster at 69.49frames per second average,whereas Me pulled off68.75. Not enough to makea visual difference, but there it is.Quake III Arena provided similar testingwith the time demo playing a matchI recorded to provide somehard numbers for us to peruse.Still running at 16-bit800x600 resolution by the way,and yeah, once again 98SE came out on topby a narrow margin.71.3 FPS average on 98, 68.8FPS on Millennium Edition.Intriguing. Next I decidedto try Need for SpeedPorsche Unleashed sincealong with UT and Q3it was one of the topgames I played on my Compaqrunning Me back then.It doesn't have a builtin time demo or benchmark,so I just recorded a racereplay and ran Fraps on each OS and yeah.Without any totals or averages at the endit's just a frame ratecounter in the top leftit's tough to say which is betterthough I'd wager Windows98 wins by a tiny amountif the other examples or any indication.Either way, it's not enoughdifference to matter.Finally, I had to try 3DMark 2000 since it runsa whole string of tests of varying typesand gives a nice overall score at the end.Okay, and yeah, no surprisehere that the final resultswere crazy close, justlike all the others,4,229 3D marks on 98SEversus 4,226 on Windows Mewithin the margin of erroras far as I'm concerned.So yeah, in terms of Direct 3D, Open GLand Glide mode gaming, Ican't say it's worth choosingone OS over the other.There are no doubt outliersthat will work on 98and not Me, and perhaps vice versa.But I haven't come across anyon this particular setup yet.And I think that's worthnoting one more timeas we wrap up here. I'vebuilt this PC piece by pieceover the years to be asawesome as possible at runningthe exact games I want inthe exact way that I want.This is all solid hardwarewith excellent vendor supportand I already had well-madedrivers and software set upand ready to go on 98SEwhen Millennium Editiontook the reigns here.So I have really given itthe best possible chanceto succeed and I thinkthat may be one reasonit's working so well.Considering the weird pointin time that Me came outin regards to things like lowquality sound and graphicshardware wonky 56Kmodems, terrible printerand scanner software, crappily made games,spinning hard disks,ill-advised airflow andcooling, mismatched drivers.Of course, the whole wildwest of internet garbagebeing downloaded on a regular basis.Yeah when you take allthat into consideration,it's no wonder that Ihad a worse time backin the day, along with thousandsof other users of Windows Me.Run enough garbage onany older Windows systemand it's gonna slow to a crawl and diean unstable blue screeny death.But give it a quality set of componentsand carefully-selecteddrivers and softwareand Millennium Edition is fine.It's fine, just fine.Nothing amazing of course,but not nearly as god-awfulas its reputation implies.As is often said,it really is likeWindows 98 Third Edition.It's the same exact overallexperience that runsthe exact same stuff with aslew of little tweaks, updates,and add-ons that may or maynot be necessary dependingon your needs.In my case, they absolutely aren't neededsince I'll take my fewadditional frames per secondand a bit less in termsof Microsoft bloat,thank you very much. And thelack of an easily accessibleMS-DOS mode alone is apersonal deal-breaker.What an annoyinglyarbitrary limitation, man.Yeah, I know Microsoftdid it in order to tryand speed up boot times andminimize device conflictsand yeah, it is quicker to start upand I haven't had any bluescreens of death so far.But the trade off isn't really worth it,at least not on this machine.That being said, I thinkI'll install it on another PCinstead, something I don'tuse as much for LGR things.Because I don't know, why not?It's weirdly enjoyable to go back and messaround with Millennium Edition, I admit.Not something I everthought I'd say, but yeah.I absolutely understandthe jaded feelings.I've been there. But alsodon't think all the hateis *entirely* warranted either.That's not to say I recommend it though,or even have much love for it.Windows 98SE is still thebetter choice for PC gamingfrom around 1994 to 2001,and just go with Windows XP after that.But it's also not the end of the world,at least when set up ona clean, reliable system.Heck, I'd say Windows Meis actually kind of funin that goofy turn of theMillennium kind of way.And that's worth atleast a little something.And if you enjoyed this LGR video,then I'm sure you'd probablydig some of the othersthat I've made covering old hardwareand software and environmentslike Microsoft Boband whatever else, I dovideos like this every week.And as always, thank youvery much for watching!\n"