Windows ME (Millennium Edition) was released December 31, 2000 as a newer version of Windows 9x to replace Windows 98. From the very beginning, it was plagued will multiple problems. A new feature of Windows ME was called System Restore which was meant to be a logging and reversion tool to allow troubleshooting and problem solving. It was intended to work as a rollback and recovery feature. System Restore suffered from a bug in the date-stamp functionality. System Restore would incorrectly date-stamp the snapshots taken after September 8, 2001 that would prevent the tool from locating these snapshots and would cause System Restore to fail. System Restore would also sometimes restore malware that the user had deleted. System restore would have to be shut down to delete the malware but then the restore points would be lost.
Windows ME restricted access to real mode MS-DOS in order to speed up booting time. This saved seconds in the booting time but applications that needed real time DOS to run such as older disk utilities, did not run under Windows ME. Windows ME had a short shelf life of just over a year and security updates and hotfixes were terminated on July 11, 2006 along with Windows 98 and Windows 98SE because Microsoft considered these products obsolete and a security risk to users running these programs.
Windows ME was criticized by users for it instability and unreliability due to frequent freezes and crashes. A PC World article dubbed Windows ME the "Mistake Edition" and placed it 4th in their "Worst Tech Products of All Time" feature. The article stated that users reported problems installing it, getting it to run, getting it to work with other hardware or software, and getting it to stop running.
I did not have the misfortune of working with Windows ME and from the many problems this OS suffered, consider myself lucky to have dodged a bullet.
Tyanan, Dan. "Windows ME". November 8, 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Me>.
Landesman, Mary. "Window ME". November 8, 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Me>.
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