Windows ME reinstallation question (yes, seriously)

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PopeKevinI

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I got handed a critical system that uses Windows ME (vendor's doing, not mine). The OS has cratered but we don't have the software to reinstall so I'm doing my best to repair it (again, the vendor's fault, but I'm stuck with this).

I know that there is a file that needs to be deleted or renamed so that you can run the Win9x/ME installer without it bailing out and complaining that there's already a version of Windows installed, but I can't remember what it is.

Does anyone remember what that file was?
 
Tell them WinME is EOL and neither you nor MS will support it, so it is time to upgrade to something else or have fun with the down time.
 
Auzner said:
Tell them WinME is EOL and neither you nor MS will support it, so it is time to upgrade to something else or have fun with the down time.
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You really are a n00b aren't ya? :p

Sometimes there is no other option than to try and fix an old machine. Either the software cannot be reinstalled anymore or their is data that needs to be recovered that is locked in some sort of software.

It is not always the case that you can just drop everything and upgrade.
 
It's easy to get a hold of WinME, just hit some torrent sites. Getting a hold of the media is easy, just use his own key to keep it legal.
 
Downloading and using a Win98 boot floppy image will overcome any problems being encountered, methinks. With a bit of fiddling it's easy enough to turn the boot flopy image into a bootable CD instead. Plenty of guides around which step you through that.

After booting from a Win98 boot disk you oughta be able to easy enough perform an over the top upgrade install or a clean install, as required.


Edit: If you're still having problems related to 'already installed' you need only rename the Windows folder. That'll fix it. A new one will be created, and you can then delete the old after everything's working.
 
Grentz said:
You really are a n00b aren't ya?
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You're right, I was born 6 days ago. I'm sorry, Windows ME is an excellent operating system. Anyone who demands to use it should not be prevented by any means.

OldPueblo said:
some torrent sites
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To save time I'd "reacquire" the software and install Win 2000 pro. If they have no redundancy with a shabby OS with no original discs they need to pay more for their carelessness or just never get their data back.
 
Except the differences between both OS's is quite decent especially considering we are talking about supporting legacy software.
 
Auzner said:
You're right, I was born 6 days ago. I'm sorry, Windows ME is an excellent operating system. Anyone who demands to use it should not be prevented by any means.
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*Yawn*

Its not about ME...its about supporting what was installed on ME.

Upgrading the OS usually does not work well with picky software ;)
 
I'd image the drive then rename windows to windows.old and nuke the extra files on the root of C:\. You probably already figured all that out tho. I don't envy you one bit, still remember the oddities of ME.
"Windows could not upgrade the file %1 from %2 %1: %2
Windows could not upgrade the file %1 from %2 %1: %2
Windows could not upgrade the file %1 from %2 %1: %2
Windows could not upgrade the file %1 from %2 %1: %2"

Lol, good luck.
 
I've said it before and will say it again, Windows ME was a great OS. Having worked for MS support at the time I can tell you the vast majority of it's issues were not the OS itself but the fact that nobody wanted to write drivers for it since everyone was focusing on Win2k and the new future going the route of the NT kernel. So people were stuck using Win98 drivers or having no drivers at all. Having installed it on hundreds of systems though with proper driver support, it was great and definitely better then 98SE. And now I hide.
 
The only real problem I had with ME is sometimes on startup the sound driver wouldn't initialize. A reboot and it was fixed. I had that box running all the way up to 2004 for lulz.
 
OldPueblo said:
I've said it before and will say it again, Windows ME was a great OS. Having worked for MS support at the time I can tell you the vast majority of it's issues were not the OS itself but the fact that nobody wanted to write drivers for it since everyone was focusing on Win2k and the new future going the route of the NT kernel. So people were stuck using Win98 drivers or having no drivers at all. Having installed it on hundreds of systems though with proper driver support, it was great and definitely better then 98SE. And now I hide.
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Better than 98SE? You gotta be joking....
 
OldPueblo said:
I've said it before and will say it again, Windows ME was a great OS. Having worked for MS support at the time I can tell you the vast majority of it's issues were not the OS itself but the fact that nobody wanted to write drivers for it since everyone was focusing on Win2k and the new future going the route of the NT kernel. So people were stuck using Win98 drivers or having no drivers at all. Having installed it on hundreds of systems though with proper driver support, it was great and definitely better then 98SE. And now I hide.
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I had ME on one of my boxes for years and never really had major issues with it. No more no less than with Win98SE.
 
number69 said:
I had ME on one of my boxes for years and never really had major issues with it. No more no less than with Win98SE.
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I experienced the ME nightmare with my mother's computer. It was just full of problems. Granted, as mentioned above, most were driver issues, but there wasn't really anything that could be done about it.
 
OldPueblo said:
I've said it before and will say it again, Windows ME was a great OS. Having worked for MS support at the time I can tell you the vast majority of it's issues were not the OS itself but the fact that nobody wanted to write drivers for it since everyone was focusing on Win2k and the new future going the route of the NT kernel. So people were stuck using Win98 drivers or having no drivers at all. Having installed it on hundreds of systems though with proper driver support, it was great and definitely better then 98SE. And now I hide.
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number69 said:
I had ME on one of my boxes for years and never really had major issues with it. No more no less than with Win98SE.
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Valiant effort, but the internet echo box has deemed ME "the worst os evar.":rolleyes:

I didn't have problems back when it was new either. My hardware had decent drivers available. I have ME currently installed on my retro gaming system and it still works fine.
 
Hey hating WinME is the cool thing to do, they tried again with Vista. :p
 
OldPueblo said:
Hey hating WinME is the cool thing to do, they tried again with Vista. :p
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Not the same thing though, Vista is a great OS and very stable.

ME had lots of problems besides just drivers...was an OEM at the time and it sucked majorly even with specially written drivers for it. Mostly just little stability things that would work their way out and cause havoc without any clear source or reason....this is on multiple hardware configs and multiple (many multiple) fresh installs and images.
 
ME should never have been made. I can't believe they tried to tack on the slight UI upgrades of Windows 2000 onto that wretched Win9x kernel. Stability was terrible, as with all Windows 9x predecessors (even the much-beloved 98SE).

After they finally merged the NT kernel with a decent user interface and media support in Windows 2000, they should have realized what a gem they had and just made a 2000 Home Edition. Somebody really screwed up thinking another iteration of Win9x was a good idea.

I'm glad they finally got it right with XP.
 
For those suggesting that I just refuse to support it, I can't.

We have a multi-million dollar cooling system on one of our campuses that is just less than ten years old. It is remotely managed over the network by an application which we cannot reinstall because the vendor doesn't allow install disks to be left with customers. When the system was set up, they provide a Windows ME system for running it. Therefore, we are STUCK with WinME.

As has been said, sometimes you simply don't have a choice. This is a system we can't just arbitrarily replace or upgrade, because it's running code that may not work in XP. And we can't just decide not to run the code, because that would require overhauling the entire air control system at a school just because the computer behind it inconveniences the IT staff. Try explaining that to a cash-strapped school board.
 
PopeKevinI said:
For those suggesting that I just refuse to support it, I can't.

We have a multi-million dollar cooling system on one of our campuses that is just less than ten years old. It is remotely managed over the network by an application which we cannot reinstall because the vendor doesn't allow install disks to be left with customers. When the system was set up, they provide a Windows ME system for running it. Therefore, we are STUCK with WinME.

As has been said, sometimes you simply don't have a choice. This is a system we can't just arbitrarily replace or upgrade, because it's running code that may not work in XP. And we can't just decide not to run the code, because that would require overhauling the entire air control system at a school just because the computer behind it inconveniences the IT staff. Try explaining that to a cash-strapped school board.
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i understand completely ..I worked at a school for troubled teens and the buildings had maglocks on the doors with swipe cards that had the software running on a win98 machine ..of which it was part of my job to keep running .. .. but what good is a million dollar air conditioning unit if you can't utilize it due to one lone ME box .. explain that to the cash strapped school board and have them complain to the "vendor" ..
 
Raptor007 said:
After they finally merged the NT kernel with a decent user interface and media support in Windows 2000, they should have realized what a gem they had and just made a 2000 Home Edition.
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That version of Win2000 made more home user friendly was called Windows XP, and it came out 13 months after ME. Windows 2000 wasn't really suitable for many home users due to far more software incompatibilities (especially games, but also many legacy packages) than ME. MS got the benefit of putting out a newer OS to test out features that were included in XP.

And that's exactly it: ME was an incremental and final upgrade to the Win9x family, due to be replaced in about a year with a NT-based OS. If you needed Win9x compatibility at the time and wanted an upgrade, there was really nothing that wrong with ME on OEM systems (besides the deficiencies of the whole Win9x line). People slapping together frankencomputers with horrible driver support had plenty of problems, not really due to ME, but just because certain manufacturers did a crummy job with drivers.

Like I said, I didn't have problems with ME at the time and I even have it currently installed on my retro gaming system. While I'd love to take the word of others over first hand experience (like the bulk of internet kiddies do :rolleyes: ), I just don't/didn't see the problems that most people mindlessly repeat. All of Win9x looked bad by comparison to XP.
 
pxc said:
That version of Win2000 made more home user friendly was called Windows XP, and it came out 13 months after ME. Windows 2000 wasn't really suitable for many home users due to far more software incompatibilities (especially games, but also many legacy packages) than ME. MS got the benefit of putting out a newer OS to test out features that were included in XP.

And that's exactly it: ME was an incremental and final upgrade to the Win9x family, due to be replaced in about a year with a NT-based OS. If you needed Win9x compatibility at the time and wanted an upgrade, there was really nothing that wrong with ME on OEM systems (besides the deficiencies of the whole Win9x line). People slapping together frankencomputers with horrible driver support had plenty of problems, not really due to ME, but just because certain manufacturers did a crummy job with drivers.

Like I said, I didn't have problems with ME at the time and I even have it currently installed on my retro gaming system. While I'd love to take the word of others over first hand experience (like the bulk of internet kiddies do :rolleyes: ), I just don't/didn't see the problems that most people mindlessly repeat. All of Win9x looked bad by comparison to XP.
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ME sucked... and I'm no "internet kiddie".... that is all. :p
 
Ah, c'mon guys - ME wasn't all bad. I actually quite liked it at the time - it was the first time that anybody had really considered boot time, and the first time that any effort had been made to make a computer boot to a desktop faster than you could make yourself a coffee. In the old reboot-happy days of the 9x kernel, that was a very welcome thing.

The only thing that irritated me about ME was the fact that I couldn't get it to run POD properly with my Voodoo 5.
 
PopeKevinI said:
For those suggesting that I just refuse to support it, I can't.

We have a multi-million dollar cooling system on one of our campuses that is just less than ten years old. It is remotely managed over the network by an application which we cannot reinstall because the vendor doesn't allow install disks to be left with customers. When the system was set up, they provide a Windows ME system for running it. Therefore, we are STUCK with WinME.

As has been said, sometimes you simply don't have a choice. This is a system we can't just arbitrarily replace or upgrade, because it's running code that may not work in XP. And we can't just decide not to run the code, because that would require overhauling the entire air control system at a school just because the computer behind it inconveniences the IT staff. Try explaining that to a cash-strapped school board.
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Better keep an image of that sucker.
 
Monkey34 said:
Better keep an image of that sucker.
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Agreed. This is just one relatively innocent example of legacy horrors that happens unavoidably in the real world. It's not so long ago that a flood in a comms room required the unplugging of an ancient 286 machine, which had clearly not been turned off since it was originally put together. It never recovered, and neither did the mainframe's main application underpinning the entire pensions department of a major financial company here in the UK, since all information regarding the interface had passed out of living memory and the companies who provided the software on both ends had gone bust.

Even though we finally resurrected it using parts scavenged from various rubbish dumps around the area, the chain of events kicked off by that little 286 box's long-overdue death was responsible for tens of thousands of average Joes losing hundreds of millions of pounds from their pensions and the company (my employer at the time) effectively going bust. That was in 2002...it scares me to think about how much worse the situation out there might be now.
 
Monkey34 said:
Better keep an image of that sucker.
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We're secretly hoping it'll die a miserable death some day soon so we'll finally be forced to replace it.

The trouble with being ethical is that you really do your best to make things work and save your employer money.
 
QwertyJuan said:
ME sucked... and I'm no "internet kiddie".... that is all. :p
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I won't go so far as to say it sucked. Much like Vista, there have been a lot of system on which it has never been a problem.

My complaint about ME is that it came out shortly after 98SE, shortly before XP, and really didn't do anything but require new drivers for hardware. At least Vista brought a lot of new features to the table along with its early driver nightmares and bugs.
 
PopeKevinI said:
We're secretly hoping it'll die a miserable death some day soon so we'll finally be forced to replace it.

The trouble with being ethical is that you really do your best to make things work and save your employer money.
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Yea........there's a few workstations here I'D like to "accidentally" knock off the desk, but I keep resisting.;)
 
Windows ME was horrible. I had nothing but problems with it even as a fresh install. There were blue screens and crashes constantly; it was very very frustrating to use. When XP came out it was like a breath of fresh air. It had its problems in the beginning but it was nowhere near as frustrating to use as Windows ME. That's my experience; not a simple regurgitation of shit I read on the Internet.
 
Win98SE > WinXP pre-SP1

Once they patched it up a little XP got a lot better. But it was annoying and had plenty of incompatibility issues before that.

ME, though, man, that always seemed like just junk. The few machines I saw running it always had issues. I always recommended rolling back to 98SE.
 
I had a machine running ME back in the day. I remember it being very unstable and having to reformat the machine every two or three months. Finally dumped it for Win2K, best O/S upgrade I ever did.
 
PopeKevinI said:
For those suggesting that I just refuse to support it, I can't.

We have a multi-million dollar cooling system on one of our campuses that is just less than ten years old. It is remotely managed over the network by an application which we cannot reinstall because the vendor doesn't allow install disks to be left with customers. When the system was set up, they provide a Windows ME system for running it. Therefore, we are STUCK with WinME.

As has been said, sometimes you simply don't have a choice. This is a system we can't just arbitrarily replace or upgrade, because it's running code that may not work in XP. And we can't just decide not to run the code, because that would require overhauling the entire air control system at a school just because the computer behind it inconveniences the IT staff. Try explaining that to a cash-strapped school board.
Click to expand...

Code that "may not work in XP"? So you don't even know?

Before you even try digging into how to fix that ME install, try copying the software over to an XP machine. Who knows, it might run without even being reinstalled. Many programs do.

GreenMonkey said:
Win98SE > WinXP pre-SP1

Once they patched it up a little XP got a lot better. But it was annoying and had plenty of incompatibility issues before that.

ME, though, man, that always seemed like just junk. The few machines I saw running it always had issues. I always recommended rolling back to 98SE.
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I have to completely disagree here. I never liked any Win9x; they were all pretty-much crap. 2000 was the first Windows I could live with... I would probably say 2000 was better than XP pre-SP1, but both were better than 98SE.
 
Raptor007 said:
Code that "may not work in XP"? So you don't even know?

Before you even try digging into how to fix that ME install, try copying the software over to an XP machine. Who knows, it might run without even being reinstalled. Many programs do.
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When you know that it works under ME, and controls something as critical as the air con in a school, do you really want to exhaustively test the software and then be responsible for any failures? It may run, but it's highly likely that problems will arise.

Seems to me that the best plan is to knock together at least two identical machines with working WinME on them so that if it fails again, you can just swap the box over and keep things going while you fix the busted one.
 
PopeKevinI said:
For those suggesting that I just refuse to support it, I can't.

We have a multi-million dollar cooling system on one of our campuses that is just less than ten years old. It is remotely managed over the network by an application which we cannot reinstall because the vendor doesn't allow install disks to be left with customers. When the system was set up, they provide a Windows ME system for running it. Therefore, we are STUCK with WinME.
Click to expand...

Then it is that vendor (or whomever has been contracted for ongoing service and support) who is responsible for correcting the problem now that the controlling boxen has 'cratered'. The Win Me box is an integral part of that multi-million dollar air-con system. This is not genuinely simply an isolated "computer problem".


Sympathies for the cash-strapped school board of course, but this situation needs to be seen and considered for what it actually is. That Win Me computer should not be looked at as "a computer" but instead looked at as "the controller of the multi-million dollar air-con system". You have no way of dealing with it as a 'computer problem', because you do not have means of reinstalling the software.


Without the controlling computer being functional the air-con system is non-functional, and correcting that lack of functionality entails obtaining from the manufacturer/vendor either a replacement computer controller or the software installation media to enable it to be installed to another existing and functional computer.

There's really no other reasonable way to consider the situation.
 
For this problem I would recommend doing an in place upgrade to Windows 2000.

It will work.

I guarantee it 100%
 
ThreeDee said:
i understand completely ..I worked at a school for troubled teens and the buildings had maglocks on the doors with swipe cards that had the software running on a win98 machine ..of which it was part of my job to keep running .. .. but what good is a million dollar air conditioning unit if you can't utilize it due to one lone ME box .. explain that to the cash strapped school board and have them complain to the "vendor" ..
Click to expand...

I was going to mention a lab full of electrical test equipment I had to support ($10k logic analyzers) that worked fine with XP SP1 but weren't even recognized under SP2. But your 'legacy' system trumps mine by a few orders of magnitude.

Depending on how you're forced to interface with your system (is it an expansion card or serial/parallel/USB?) you might find that, if you can scrounge up some MEdia, virtualization would help your problems.
 
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