I can't stand ME. This is not going to be a litany of reasons why, nor an invitation to folks to try to convince me otherwise. I have my reasons. I just want to know one thing: can anyone tell me of a safe way to "downgrade" to Win98SE on a computer that came with ME installed? Deepest thanks in advance.

First, let me suggest a visit here to sort out ME into a beautiful, loveable little system: http://www.computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/18106.html Assuming you don't want to, however, if you upgraded you might have the uninstall files in add/remove programs in control panel and that's the easiest way. If you don't, Microsoft have an article on the Windows CDs on how to do this and also on their website. On the ME CD you'll find the excellent article in \addons\document\guide and it's called mqsg (believe it or not). The information you want starts about page 31. On the website, go to http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q255/8/67.asp and http://support.microsoft.com/support/windows/topics/winme/setup/setupht.asp http://www.windowsreinstall.com/ is also useful Be very careful you have all your drivers and original disks for all your components and peripherals, or download latest versions before you start. (If you can't find the article, mail me and I'll send it to you)

Thanks, Trev, for the (incredibly) fast reply. Checked out your posting 18106. All very sound but all things that, alas, I more or less knew about. Here are some particulars if you have a minute: I bought a Toshiba Satellite laptop s805-s301 thinking that it had the option of running on 98SE or the new ME. But it only had ME as an option. This was not an upgrade (only wish it was). Instead of coming with a Windows ME cd these computers come with a "Configuration Builder" cd which has the OS as well as software and drivers for components. Called Toshiba and got a resounding Sorry Charlie, the word "unfortunately" was used twenty times by the rep. Even if they could send me a new Configuration Builder cd with 98SE it would give a "wrong machine error." They said I'm welcome to change any software or drivers I would like, that it wouldn't effect my warranty. Here's an idea: Do those upgrade cd's work in reverse? Can I pop-in an "update to Windows 98SE" cd to downgrade from ME? You can see that I'm looking for anything.

What kind of problems are you having,got plenty of ram?That seems to be the easy cure for keeping ME happy.

Impossible to downgrade to windows 98se from windows me without a copy of windows 98se. upgrade cds do not work in reverse. You will need a full 98se cd or a 98se upgrade and a windows 95 cd as qualifying software. Your data and software should work with windows 98se. Your drivers might also work, if not you can usually download them somewhere on the internet.

I would NOT recommend going back to Win98 in any way. I tried. HUGE problems with getting drivers installed, finding all the files that were needed. Had to use INF files from ME. Then, after all that, I had an OS that crashed over a dozen times on me in one day, froze up, and was noticably slower. Fix ME. I have it, and usually it works pretty good.

If you decide to keep ME let me suggest that you try installing Norton Utilities to take control of the OS. It does a much better job at optimizing and defragmenting your hard drives as well as checking thouroughly for invalid registry entries, shortcuts and active X controls all of which can quietly cause ME to give you "reasons" to get rid of it. I had constant ME problems until i installed Norton Utilities and now my system run fast and stable. It works great on Win98SE and WinME but i wouldn't recommend it to Win2000 or WinXP users.