Windows ME.
After finally getting HijackThis to do what it does well, I eventually
got USB Thumbdrive support copied from a FLOPPY (heh!) onto the
harddrive and now my Lexar drives work with WinME. My favorite go-to
tool doesn't work on M.E., but Spybot does! So I had it go do what it
does well. It found 809 items to remove. The system works much much
better now. I still want to get an anti-virus scan done.
Windows ME has some issues. I don't think this system has had any
updates before Microsoft dropped support. It doesn't seem to recognize
DVDs larger than 1.99G or that a DVD has more than that on it even if it
does end up accessing it. The taskbar also locks up so program tabs
don't disappear when you close them and then you also can't use the
Start menu. I see there were fixes Microsoft issued, but I'll have to
use one group's unofficial service pack to address these problems, among
others.
However, these all become moot if I can get Windows XP to go in and take
charge. That means replacing the optical drive with either a DVD burner
(kinda overkill) or a DVD-CD burner combo drive, which would be more
appropriate. It would do me no good to end up with a drive that won't
recognize disks made by DVD Flick, though. Even after the work I did
checking out the unit, the drive won't read anything now.
Second recommendation is taking this system up to its maximum of 512MB
of RAM. One webstore estimates a cost of $30 for this (256x2). This
would enable XP a more suitable environment, even if all it does is play
back video.
I wouldn't mind adding an Ethernet PCI card for it, which may be
superfluous after seeing a Linksys wireless module on one computer a
week ago. Depends on which is cheaper.
The monitor that came with it blows. It does a maximum of 800x600. It's
certainly not multi-sync. The graphics controller can do wide screen
display ratios which makes it awesome. One thing that ME does that bugs
me is that it doesn't remember window settings for things like My
Computer - it doesn't remember the size and that I want to display
Details and not a List. I'm always having to reset that.
I also found some protected WMA files on there. What I'm going to find
out is if Daemon Tools Lite works on Windows ME and emulate a CD Burner
drive and put those protected files on a simulated CD image so I can rip
it into unprotected MP3s. I don't know why I'm even bothering because
it's likely music I don't care about. Also found what looks to be left
over AIM files indicating a plethora of AIM screen names the girl who
might have used the system had in their contacts list.
It's got Microsoft Office on there which is super nice. All the more
reason to keep Win ME on there. There are some files I have no idea what
they are so I'll be poking around on the 20G harddrive more.
Oh, and any chance that some deleted pr0n might be lurking is most
likely gone because I defragmented the drive, too.
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