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WIndows ME is a bad idea

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by ferocious 2 views

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One of my clients has 3 W2K workstations, 1 W95 box, and a Win ME box. He backs up the data from the primary W2K box to the Win ME workstation. The target drive is 30 GB and he is down to 80 MB w/o accessing the Internet! In addition, no additional apps have been loaded in 400+ days. The PC has had shutdown problems. Can someone tell me how many snapshots ME keeps and how to delete the old ones? I told him a while back that ME should NOT be used in an office environment. The system ran scandisk thorough at night and when he went in the next day the machine was at the login prompt! Is this normal for ME, to reboot the machine during scandisk, or could this be the cleaning crew messing with it? He is taking my advice to replace the PC with something other than ME, but I need to know a little more about those snapshots, anyway. Thanks in advance.

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by jason-brubaker

From what I've experienced with WinMe it can reboot at any time with no apparent reason whatsoever. Most times its some conflict with the installed hardware and the OS, but I've had it reboot a machine running no applications or TSRs before too. Still, as you get under 100MB of disk space you'll notice more and more problems crop up as depending on the amount of virtual memory you have set up and swap space needed for system tools (like scandisk or defrag). My advice, get a tape drive and throw it into the win2k box. Way way more reliable.

by ferocious

The client called me and said that after he ran scandisk numerous times in the thorough mode that defrag still would not finish and that his HD space went from 80 - 10 MB. This is on a 30 GB HD that does nothing but run a medical application and retain backups from the other PC. I told him I can't really do anything about it over the phone and I need to visit his office; which I am about to do. I have an older 6 GB HD that I'll probably put W98 on and slap it in the PC as a temp solution so that his employees can still use it until I can discuss his options with him - like a new PC(?) or just keep the HD I give him. Windows ME is not a solution for anything. Any other OS is better, in my honest opinion.

by cmann

so many time people say bad things about certain products, based only on one or two experiences.
most times its the experience of others and not thier own. I have never had a problem at all with winME. the reason you are having problems with scandisk is probly because you are not doing it in safe mode. If you dont do this it will usually fail at 10% and keep starting over. There are many things that you can do. This all depends on what you client wants. Sometimes they are not willing to spend any money on a new OS.

by ferocious

I concur, however, I guess I need to blame it on myself for not going to his office to take care of the issue. I asked if he had done that and he said he had gone back to the store and that's what they told him to do, but apparently it didn't help. The problem I have with it is that it's on a network, and you are correct in that I haven't played with the OS enough, so I guess I can be faulted for some of it. I told him last year to have all his PCs with Windows 2000 and he can afford it. Heonly has 5 PCs in his office and I believe he will take that machine home for his kids and get a new one. Yes, it is similar to a first-time experience with NT or anything else in that one will say the OS sucks because it is causing problems. I'llblame myself for that. Trust me, that machine ran fine for a long time before this issue crept up, so I guess I need to pound on his door. Thanks for you objectivity and professional response, as well.

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