I complained so much about Windows ME that someone convinced me to buy the Windows 2000 upgrade, which he claimed was much more stable than Win ME and I would have fewer troubles.

I haven't installed it yet since I got a little worried because I don't recall much said about Windows 2000 and Adventure games. I don't want to get in a situation in which I can't play a lot of games which would at least semi-work on WinME if I should go ahead and "upgrade" to Win2000.

I need comments (or maybe just reassurance) before taking the plunge. I have a standard (except upgraded to 512 MB RAM) 900 MHz Hewlett Packard Pavilion computer.

<img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="confused.gif" />

If you install Win 2000, you'll probably want to activate the compatibility feature in it.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;279792

This sounds useful, particularly since it involves Win95. Will it do Win98? I'll have to figure out how to arrange to be the "Administrator", but if there is just one computer? Oh for a printed manual so you could flip pages. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="confused.gif" />

Windows 2000 despite its name is the successor to NT4. It's aimed at businesses. It may be more stable than WinMe but I wouldn't install it to run games on.

Windows XP is the upgrade to Windows ME not Windows 2000.

I agree with Peter, Windows 2000 is not marketed for home computing users, it's aimed at buisnesses, and is especialy used for servers. I have it on my PC at work, and many games demos I've downloaded won't work on it. I would go with Windows XP for home use.

Louis

I've been running W2K on my home system for over 2 years now and have yet to find a game that won't play except some very old Win95 stuff and even some of them I have gotten to run fine. W2K is very stable and game friendly. XP is also a very good OS but you need to be careful about "driver" issues if you have some older hardware. Since I'm MCSE2K certified I can tweak around if needed but I haven't had too.....all my games have run without any adjustments. JMHO....hope this helps.....

that's interesting... i didn't even know you *could* upgrade from ME to 2000 (since ME is a home product and 2000 is a business product).

check www.ntcompatible.com -- people sometimes report there whether games run under win2000.

i have win2000 on a laptop but haven't used it for games. but i have heard that it runs some dos games better than XP.

-emily

This is the reason I love Win98SE and will never use another OS. My computer has all the state of art bells and whistles, built to my specifications with emphasis on not to use any OS other than 98SE. I can run practically any game I want with no problems and since I got this machine have had no blue screens of death or freezes, runs like a dream. Other computers in the house have ME and XP. Mine's been running better than their's and while they have problems with some games mine loads them right up without a glitch.

GAMEMAN007,what is the difference between Win98 and Win98SE? I have an old computer that has Win98 on it. It is so old that I can't play modern games on it, but I am hoping to be able to play the older games that WinME gags on. However, my WinME is a pretty miserable operating system for playing Adventure games. In fact, it is just a pretty miserable operating system PERIOD!

Hi all,
Ever since I replaced that horrid WinME (came with my desktop) with WinXP, I have never been happier. It's stable, it runs great, games run great, I even like the interface. It's the only Microsoft OS I ever liked.

As for upgrading from WinME to Win2K, can you even do that? For some reason I thought that wasn't supported, but I'm not sure. Adlovpuz, I would take Win2K back, assuming you still can.

On Win98 and Win98SE - I thought that Win98SE was enough of an updgrade to Win98 that it could practically be considered a new OS. I had it on one older laptop, and I thought it was pretty good. If you want a "98", Win98SE (special edition) is the one to get. However, if you are on WinME, which is a later release than Win98, I don't think you can go back - your choice of OS is what's after WinMe, if you want to do an upgrade.

On the choice of operating system, I do realize that the choice of an OS is something of a personal preference, so I try not to be dogmatic here (except for WinME, which I just hated). However (isn't there always a "however"), new machines come with WinXP, we don't always build our own machine. I myself plan to never build a machine. Oh, I'll do a litte upgrading of components (like a video card), but I buy from major vendors. The fact that WinXP is, in my opinion, a very good OS, makes it OK for me that WinXP comes on new machines. As for upgrading, or not, to WinXP, it depends on what you want to do with your machine. If you buy "stuff" for your machine (printers, scanners, digital camera), or buy new software, or even new games, eventually, the new stuff is going to work badly on the old OS, or not work on the old OS at all.

As to game compatibiliy, there are all kinds of threads on what will and won't play on XP (and NT) - there's a good one going on here at gameboomers, that mention some swell sites, and Inferno's excellent notes on getting games to run on XP. Yup, there are games that won't run on XP, but not at many as I thought. Of course, if it's the game you really want to play, this could be a problem.

Hey, didn't the same thing happen when people went from Win95 to Win98?

All for now.

If you wanted to go from ME to 98 SE you would have to do a total format of your hard drive (make sure to backup all important files on a zip drive, burn oto a CD or drag over to a second drive on the computer (I have folders of game saves, walkthroughs, and important files on a secondary drive). When I'm ready to install a game I stopped at some point due to a format I simply install then drag the save files from the other drive into that directory. Once the C: drive is formatted then install Win98 SE and all your driver and program stuff.