Hi all ME helpers! How about this one. I have installed WIN ME (WIN98 update) on my computer and so far so good. Everything checks out as it should and all folders and files seems to be in order. But.... If I restart ME or if I try to run scandisk my HD gets all currupted. I have tried to install both on top of WIN98 and on a clean HD using the WIN98 CD as a verification but it makes no difference. These are some notes from my latest attempt: 1 The Windows folder is gone 2 A lot of folders have corrupted names 3 One file show a filesize of 4.294.967.295 bytes (on a 1.6 GB HD!!) 4 The files vmm32.vxd, nlsfunk.sys, keyb.sys and ifshlp.sys are reported damaged After running scandisk: 5 36 folders named DIR00001 - DIR00036 are created 6 417 files named file0001.chk - file0417.chk are created 7 58590 + 10126 lost clusters in 1350 + 417 chains reported 8 My A: drive is running continously 9 The end!! I have tried this 6 times with different configurations, the last time with everything disconnected exept for my HD, CD and video card. NB. I can reinstall WIN98 without any problems! Is there a compatability problem with my bios or video card or could it be something wrong with my WIN ME copy? I have a 200MHz, 64MB RAM, 1.6GB HD, with an Award modular bios v.4.51 PG and a Diamond Stealth 64 video card Any more information needed?? Please help! Dennis

I too had problems with Windows ME upgrade. I have a Hewlett Packard with AMD-K6 333Mhz. I had a Maxtor 20.5 GB hard drive. Everything was fine running Windows 98. I purchase and install Windows ME upgrade and the whole system crawls, and locks up constantly. I uninstalled Windows ME and went back to Win 98. But the system still crawled. I backed up data and FDISKED and Re-formatted the drive and reloaded the RESTORE disk for my system. During the Format... several bad sectors were located on the drive. I finally got Win 98 back up and running. Like an idiot I tried ME again, thinking that maybe I needed a fresh install of 98 to make sure things were OK. Things worked fine for about 6 hours. Then the system started slowing, Locking up.. I tried uninstalling ME again. But the system was still unbelievably slow... 8 minutes from boot to get to the PASSWORD dialog box. So I tried re-formatting to attempt another RESTORE. OOPS... System reported DISK FAILURE on DRIVE 1 predicted.. please back up data. I had no data on the drive so I proceeded to format the drive. I got a Invalid Media on Track 0. The drive was toasted. I bought another drive and re-installed Win 98... I don't think I will make the same mistake a third time.

4/24/2K, purchased Emachine 533ID2, came loaded w/ Win 98. Yesterday, I tried to install Win ME upgrade. Computer will only boot up partially. Screen pattern appears, but no icons, no "start" in lower left monitor screen. Spent 34 long distance minutes on phone to Emachine tech support. Best he could do was suggest using Emachine Restore CD [which wipes clean any data residing on HD]. He suggested going to DOS, and making backups of data files. It seems that they used DOS ver 4.01, my DOS guidebook is for ver 6.0 Any suggestions, please?

I make assumptions to try to understand problems like the one you have, and I have come to suspect that there is a second swap file in windows probably even deeper hidden than the Windows swap file--i.e. you cannot see it with attrib. This file explains how install can continue with the install disks removed and the computer rebooting. I do not say there is no other way to achieve this, but another swap file would. Well, I think after installation the file just sits there keeping a record of what you do, and it makes bad luck of the type you describe if it thinks you are cheating Microsoft. I think it makes windows run unbelievably sluggishly for one example. Your problem is that on reinstallation you do not erase the old swap file which was not on the new drive you made a successful install on. (Of course some virus may have attacked your old drive, but that seems less likely) What you ought to do is get a very early version of DOS, an install floppy that comes with new hard drives or Wipe.exe from Crack pipe. Then you ought to format your old hard drive. Not just C:. Format every logical drive, and if you feel paranoid, take the partitions off with Fdisk. Then see if you can successfully install on your "bad" drive. If you can, you will know it was some kind of software caused problem.

Why not return to Win98? Is there something SO compelling about ME that you HAVE to put yourself (and your system) thru all this?

64Meg of ram is not enough for windows 98 much less windows ME. Upgrade to 128 meg.

I also had a HD go dead while installing ME. During the final pass of installation, after it autorebooted twice, my secondary HD just went dead. Nothing I could do, even booting from old DOS disk could restore it. I swapped in another HD and everything went fine. Could ME have permanently killed my HD? Its just too much of a coincidence that it died DURING a ME installation.