Windows Millennium Edition (originally codenamed Millennium and Georgia), also known as Windows Me, is a 32-bit graphical operating system released on September 14, 2000 by Microsoft.

A successor to Windows 95 and Windows 98, Windows Me mainly comprised of relatively small upgrades such as Internet Explorer 5.5. It also bundled Windows Media Player 7, which was meant to rival the then-dominant media player Real Player, and included the new Movie Maker software, which provided basic video editing and was designed to be easy for home users. Both Internet Explorer 5.5 and Windows Media Player 7 could also be downloaded for free from the Internet for earlier versions of Windows. Microsoft also updated the GUI in Windows Me with features that were first introduced in Windows 2000.

One of the most publicized changes in Windows Me, was that it no longer included real mode MS-DOS. This suggested that, unlike Windows 95 and 98, it did not load DOS before loading a Windows graphic shell. However, the changes to Windows Me were minor, with access to real mode DOS simply restricted, so some applications (such as older disk utilities) that required real mode would not run in Windows Me. However, a number of hacks exist that restore support for real mode DOS. [1] [2]

Windows Me also introduced the "System Restore" logging and reversion system, which was meant to simplify troubleshooting and solving problems. It was intended to work as a "safety net" so that if the installation of an application or a driver adversely affected the system, the user could undo the install and return the system to a previously-working state. It did this by monitoring changes to Windows system files and the registry (System Restore was not a backup program). System Restore could slow the computer's performance if it chose to checkpoint the system while a user was using it, and since its method of keeping track of changes was fairly simplistic, it could sometimes end up restoring a virus which the user had previously removed.

Users were generally unimpressed with Windows Me, especially due to serious stability issues and sales were consequently, fairly low. [3] Some claimed that it was little more than an upgrade of Windows 98, not a version in its own right and it has since been widely panned (perhaps somewhat hyperbolically) as the worst operating system Microsoft has ever released. At the time of its release, several third-party applications written for Microsoft Windows, especially older games, ran under Windows Me but not under Windows XP, which is not based on DOS. This situation has become irrelevant with the precipitous decline in popularity of Me after the release of Windows XP.

Windows Me was succeeded by Windows XP, Microsoft's desktop operating system based on the Windows NT kernel (on which Windows 2000 was also based).

External links

• Official page