Laptop Tips for Windows ME Updated 10-18-2000 Ojatex@aol.com Windows ME on your Laptop? YES NO MAYBE SO Ojatex's LaptopME Tips page: http://user.aol.com/ojatex/lapwinme.htm Ojatex's LaptopME Tips in Adobe Acrobat PDF format (freeware): http://user.aol.com/ojatex/lapmepdf.zip You need Adobe Acrobat reader (free) to view PDF files: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html Ojatex's Complete Laptop, Laptop98, Laptop2000 + LaptopME Tips in Windows HELP format (freeware): http://user.aol.com/aljoajo/LapHlp.zip If you have questions, tips of your own or portable problems, please contact the author at Ojatex@aol.com If your laptop didn't come with Win ME, is the "upgrade" worth the extra bucks & possibly the extra aggravation? To answer this question, you'll want to know what Win ME has to offer & how it is going to "take to" your system. As many laptop users know, internal hardware is not easily changed/upgraded, new drivers for existing hardware is not on anyone's high priority list, and available space is often a critical consideration. 01. Protect What You Have: If you have a solid install of Windows, back it up before letting Win ME loose; better yet, if you are going to try WIN ME, install it to a partition of its own so it can't touch your existing configuration. A separate partition insures that you will have uninterrupted access to your files, hardware & the Internet while still being able to: a. "persuade" Win ME to work with most if not all of your software & hardware b. limit its tendency to gobble up your hard drive clusters c. give it the flexibility/customization found in prior Windows versions 02. Déjà Vu Errors: Win ME has brought back all the standard problems: a. No Shutdown b. No Restart c. BSODs [Blue Screen of Death] d. WPEs [Windows Protection Error] and added one of its own [rarely seen in prior Windows Versions]: e. System Halted Solving these errors/problems can be time consuming, but a plan of attack can pay off. When Windows ME installs, it determines what devices you have & what drivers match up to these devices. You may well find that many of these determinations are not viable or correct. The drivers that worked with a previous version of Windows may or may not work for any particular device, but before installing old drivers [or new drivers if you can find them from the vendor/OEM], try disabling various devices, in turn, to isolate the offender[s]. Popular practice [for desktops anyway] is to blame the display adapter/driver for errors. To test this "theory" on a laptop, from start>run>msconfig, choose selective startup button, startup tab, advanced button. Check the "VGA 640x480x16" box and try both a restart and a shutdown. But, of course, you don't want to end up with a working version of Win ME that is stuck with 16 colours using half your screen which is often the default resolution that Win ME selects on initial install on a laptop. Now go back via msconfig to clear [uncheck] the "VGA 640x480x16" box & reboot [or, if normal reboot is causing hangs, try "Ctrl+Alt+Del" a few times instead]. 03. Device Manager Tells the Tale: From Control Panel, open Device Manager and select the "System" icon. [For convenience, you may want to put a shortcut to "system" on your desktop; it may well become a "permanent" fixture with Win ME.] a. For shutdown problems, try disabling any Infrared devices especially the IrDA Fast Infrared Port under Network Adapters and any real or "virtual" infrared ports. b. For restart problems, if you use a PCMCIA drive, look under "Hard Disk Controllers", particularly for a "Standard IDE/ESDI Hard Disk Controller" which Win Me may have installed to run the PCMCIA drive. Allied with this controller will be one or more "Generic IDE Disk Type" devices, such as Type 48 &/or Type 80 under the "Disk Drives" category. [The Settings tab will reveal which Drive letter is associated with which Disk Type.] When the Standard IDE/ESDI Hard Disk Controller is disabled, the allied Generic IDE Disk Types should also disable. When this device is enabled, the standard PCMCIA mounting "beep" should result as long as PCMCIA sounds haven't been disabled. To see if the the PCMCIA drive was properly enabled, open My Computer for the presence of a new drive icon. c. Other problem devices/conflicts may also be present. Examine all device types for ones that have been installed that don't describe your system's devices accurately [such as the wrong modem] or which are not generally present such as "virtual" COM or printer ports. Remove these devices. NOTE: If installing the manufacturer's or orignal driver is unsuccessful for those devices which were disabled to solve restart/shutdown problems, the devices may still be useable but should be manually enabled after bootup & disabled before restart/shutdown in Device Manager. 04. Match 'Em Up: Serial port modems may present a particular problem as Win ME may create port numbers which are not viable & lose the modem or find the wrong one. Often getting the right COM port installed with the right modem is a succession of removing ports and modems until Win ME finally gets the match right. If you are an AOL user, install the AOL version found on the WIN ME CD. AOL seems to have a better knack at finding the right modem on the right port than Windows does. 05. Turn It Off: By default, Win ME has set several services and features to run automatically such as items in Task Scheduler, Automatic Update and Msconfig. Many of these items can be disabled to increase your startup resources & retain manual control of your system. Items auto-started can be pared down drastically via "System Configuration Utility's [msconfig] Selective Startup tab where just Scan Registry is sufficient in some cases. While using this utility, select the Advanced Button to enable Win ME's Startup Menu. In addition, from Control Panel, open Add/Remove Programs>Windows Setup tab. Remove Windows components that are not needed. Win ME also installs Windows Media Player version #7 even if you didn't want it; attempting to uninstall WMP7 from the Control Panel often doesn't work. If you are not fond of screaming multimedia gobbling up resources, this newer version can be uninstalled and the more sedate 6.4 version used instead: a. Delete wmpscheme.xml, wmploc.dll, wmplene.dll, wmpui.dll, wmpcore.dll, wmp.ocx & wmpcd.dll in Windows/System b. Delete wmp.inf in Windows/Inf c. Delete wmplayer.chm in Windows/Help d. Delete wmplayer.exe in Program Files/Windows Media Player e. From start>run, type "mplayer2.exe" [no quotes] to open WMP6.4 f. From View>Options>Formats tab>Select All button, choose OK to associate multimedia extensions with WMP6.4 06. Move that Cab: By default, when Win ME installs, it copies "cab" files to the hard drive. This practice had been advocated by many users previously, & now Windows has formalized it. Evidently, laptoppers were left out of that poll as many of us, especially with older machines, are in a continual byte fight with bloated apps/files that squeeze our hard drives. Defensively, the portable drive is a good repository of such bloat. The "cab" files which are copied represent the contents of the Win9x folder on the Win ME CD excluding the "ols" folder; they are now parked on the hard drive in: C:\Windows\Options\Install taking up about 153MB of space. If you have a portable drive [such as the ZIP250, Shark or ORB], create a folder on a portable disk named "Windows", then cut/paste the Options folder from the hard drive to the portable drive into the newly created Windows folder. Now, so Windows will find these files, repath the "Drive Letter" in the Registry as follows: a. From Start>Run, type "regedit" [no quotes] b. In the left pane, browse to the key: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup c. In the right pane, highlight the String "SourcePath" & click to open d. Change only the Drive Letter, e.g. C to F, if F is the letter of your portable drive e. The new SourcePath value [in this example] will be: "F:\Windows\Options\Install" 07. Too Much Backup: Win ME has a new feature called "System Restore" which saves your system's configurations at various points in time, so if trouble comes, a previous configuration can be restored. But there is a price to pay for this feature, & for a laptop which often has a smaller hard drive than a desktop, the price can be too high. To limit the size to which System Restore can grow: a. Right click on "My Computer", select Properties b. Select the Perfomance tab, then the File System button c. Move the slider "System Restore disk space uses" to the Minimum [200MB] d. If 200MB is too much, open the Troubleshooting tab, select Disable System Restore. 08. Help Me Not: Win ME has migrated the Help function into a new feature named "PC Health" which overlays the compiled help files [CHMs] that converted the utilitarian HELP [hlp] files to a web page look. This new feature takes resources, fills the cache [TIF] with files and assimilates your system into an automatically updated & protected OS based on the Microsoft vision of what it should be. If you would rather save those resources & maintain your own system, run "msconfig" to disable PC Health. For additional information on how to rid your system of built in features, see Axcel216's Win ME Optimizing Tips at http://members.aol.com/axcel216/me1.htm. 09. Power Matters: If your system had trouble with initiating hibernate &/or standby or resuming from those states before Win ME, similar problems after it is installed are not unexpected. Do you really trust these Windows managed functions to work flawlessly when your critical data may be at stake? If the answer is no, open Power Option Properties in Control Panel, select "Never" for both items. In addition, Advanced Power Management support under Device Manager's System Devices can be disabled. 10. Recrown the BOSS: Win ME has demoted DOS to servant status only able to run after Windows rules the realm; happily those who are loyal to real DOS [MS-DOS mode] & who appreciate its powerful utility can, with a few fixes, return true MS-DOS to its former "reigning" status. There are several sources on the web where the MS-DOS patch can be found; here's one at http://www.mvps.org/dts/Faq/win-me_faq.htm that works well. So, what will it be -- Win ME or Win ME NOT? With a little luck & some judicious paring, tweaking and work-arounds as outlined in the above 10 tips, your laptop might run almost as well as it did before installation. 11. Run Your Old Stuff: If you have some favourite old software of the 16Bit persuasion especially if it has a critical data set behind it such as financial & personal records, it is rather imperative that it will work with Win Me. Many of these old programs will not install successfully on Win ME, but they will run on Win ME from an installation that was made on a prior OS, such as Win3.1, Win95 or Win98 because they are "self-contained" in their own folder with little or no dependence on Windows System files. If you run multiple Windows OSes, these programs once installed to or moved to a portable drive from the hard drive can be run by the various OSes with only the "ini" file copied to the associated Windows folder. After copying the "ini" file, open it to make sure it is pathed to the proper drive letter. If, when attempting to run an old program on Win ME for the first time, Windows sends a message about a missing "dll" file, copy that "dll" file from the prior OS's System folder or restore it from a backup. If any of these old programs have "reg" [Registry] files, merge them into the Win ME Registry; when opening the program in Win ME, an error message may occur about "improper" registration, but these errors can be ignored. 12. Scan in 16Bits: Often newer scanners have no current drivers available when Win Me was first issued, but an older scanner that runs from 16Bit software can be installed successfully though it won't appear in the Control Panel under "Scanners & Cameras". Be careful not to over-write existing Windows System files if File Protection is turned off; as with older software, the scanner software can be installed or moved to a portable drive.Download Driver Pack
After your driver has been downloaded, follow these simple steps to install it.
Expand the archive file (if the download file is in zip or rar format).
If the expanded file has an .exe extension, double click it and follow the installation instructions.
Otherwise, open Device Manager by right-clicking the Start menu and selecting Device Manager.
Find the device and model you want to update in the device list.
Double-click on it to open the Properties dialog box.
From the Properties dialog box, select the Driver tab.
Click the Update Driver button, then follow the instructions.
Very important: You must reboot your system to ensure that any driver updates have taken effect.
For more help, visit our Driver Support section for step-by-step videos on how to install drivers for every file type.