Running Me on a IBM X32

I decided to run Me as dual boot OS with XP Pro, but could not get the Me OS to install completely. A friend told me that the notebook may have been too fast for Me. I am thinking about looking for an older IBM notebook to dual boot XP and Me, X20 or something like that. Any information would be appreciated.

 

Why use ME instead of 2K? And more importantly, why use ME?

 

It's not too fast - most likely it is choking on the hardware during some portion of the installation process. If you check eBay, I'm sure you can find a very old laptop that will meet your needs.

You might want to test that disc on a desktop, to verify the disc isn't damaged.

 

Just for the heck of it. No particular reason othe then my fav older OS and I thought about running on my old notebook. I partitioned the HD in FAT32 @ 5GB of 100 GB HDl but it would load, but would fail to install after reboot. I when to a smaller HD (60) and kept getting the same result. I used the FDisk on the disc to format and got the same. Does anyone know, if a lower end ThinkPad would work well with this OS? I am steering toward an X20.

 

Besides getting older hardware, you could run Windows ME as a guest OS in a virtual machine. A good free virtual machine program is VirtualBox. I would say VirtualBox is only second behind VMware Workstation (but that costs money). You just cannot play 3D games.

You could even install and run Microsoft Windows 3.11.

 

An X20 would probably work with Windows ME. It at least has driver support.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-4LXTHS.html

But, if you really want to run it I would say try the virtual environment.

 

Two ideas on why this might not be working:

*How much memory does your laptop have? Windows 98 cannot handle more than 1 GB, and according to this Web page that seems to be fairly accurate, neither can Windows ME. I've heard that some dedicated tweakers have gotten 98 stable with up to 1536 MB, but no more, and even that's quite difficult. Other times I've read of 98 running into trouble with more than 512 MB. So you may well have too much memory.

*Do you have a SATA hard drive? I know XP SP2 with no changes has trouble installing to SATA hard drives; older versions of Windows might as well.

What do you mean "after reboot"? Is that after it's totally installed (100%) and then it reboots and asks you to set it up, or somewhere earlier? I've never installed ME myself, so I'm not personally familiar with it, but I've done some 98 installs fairly recently.

My personal experience with Windows 9x on recent hardware:

*Windows 95 installed on my Inspiron 1520 with a SATA hard drive and 2 GB RAM. Unfortunately, when I booted it up I just got a bunch of gobbledygook text on the screen. Dinna kin why.
*Windows 98 got to 64% installed on the same Inspiron 1520, and then told me to "Insert floppy disk into drive B:". I couldn't get it to skip this, and since I don't have two floppy drives (or even one), that's the furthest I got.
*Windows 3.11 installed and ran just fine. Don't ask me why it does fine with 2 GB and SATA when 95 and 98 don't, but it did. I was just happy it worked.
*Windows 95 and 98 run pretty well in Microsoft Virtual PC 2004. You won't be able to run fancy games (S3 Trio graphics card), but some old ones will work. 95, 98 First Edition, and ME aren't supported on VPC 2007 - so you may want to use the older 2004.
*Windows 3.11 doesn't work on VirtualBox for some reason. But 9x/ME might - haven't been able to try as my 9x CD's are 500 miles away.

But in summary, I doubt you'll be able to get ME running on your current laptop, though if you reduce your RAM enough there's a small chance. But you shouldn't have too much difficulty getting it working in a virtual machine.

 

Well, you answered the question, It's a memory issue, I had this same issue with my Clevo D900T, but I thought it was the SATA drivers, I am thinking an X30 was limited to 1GB of Ram, So I might go that route. I did run Me in vitrual on the Clevo, but I did not like the window based interface, I am Looking at actual desktop interface. Thanks for the very helpfull information.