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A successor to Windows 95 and Windows 98, Windows ME mainly comprised of relatively small upgrades such as Internet Explorer 5.5. It also bundled Windows Media Player 7, which was meant to rival Real Player, the then-dominant media player. (Both Internet Explorer 5.5 and Windows Media Player 7 could also be downloaded for free from the Internet for earlier versions of Windows.) Windows ME also included the new Movie Maker software, which provided basic video editing and was designed to be easy for a home user to use.

The most significant change in Windows ME, however, was that it no longer included real mode MS-DOS. This meant that, unlike Windows 95 and 98, it did not load DOS before loading a Windows graphic shell. The result was a much quicker boot time, however, due to this it could not boot directly into a command-line DOS compatibility mode. It still provided a "virtual mode" DOS which could be run in a window, but some applications (such as older disk utilities) required real mode and would not run in a DOS window.

Windows ME also introduced the "System Restore" logging and reversion system, which was meant to simplify troubleshooting and solving problems. It was intended to work as a "safety net" so that if the installation of an application or a driver adversely affected the system, the user could undo the install and return the system to a previously-working state. It did this by monitoring changes to Windows system files and the registryRegistry' has several meanings, all of which relate to its general meaning. A Registry is the 'thing' that holds the 'register' record of the 'ownership' of a 'thing'. For example, HM Land Registry records the proprietorship of land in the UK, Nominet UK. (System Restore was not a backup program.) System Restore could slow the computer's performance if it chose to checkpoint the system while a user was using it, and since its method of keeping track of changes was fairly simplistic, it could sometimes end up restoring a virusIn computer security technology, a virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents (for a complete definition: see below). Thus, a computer virus behaves in a way similar to a biologic which the user had previously removed.

Users were generally unimpressed with Windows ME [1], especially due to serious stability issues. Some claimed that it only deserved to be an upgrade to Windows 98 (Such as Windows 98 Third Edition), not a version in its own right; others called it the worst Windows release since 3.0. However, it is still widely used, more than likely by people who either use computers that can't handle an upgrade, or by users who aren't aware of an upgrade. It is also sometimes referred to as Windows Mistake Edition. However, many third-party applications written for Microsoft Windows - specifically a number of games - will run under Windows ME and earlier releases but will not run under Windows XP, which relies less on a DOS-based backend.

Windows ME was succeeded by Windows XPWindows XP ( codename Whistler is the latest desktop version of the Windows operating system from Microsoft. It was made publicly available on October 25, 2001. Two editions of Windows XP are most commonly available: Windows XP Home Edition which is targe, Microsoft's desktop operating system based on the more robust Windows NTMicrosoft Windows NT is an operating system produced by Microsoft Corporation. It is the ancestor of their current flagship Windows XP. Development When development started in 1988, Windows NT was to be known as OS/2 3. 0, the third version of the operati kernel (on which Windows 2000Microsoft Windows 2000 (also referred to as Win2K is a 32-bit graphical business-oriented operating system released on February 17, 2000 by the Microsoft Corporation. Windows 2000 comes in four versions: Professional Server Advanced Server and Datacenter was also based).