Re: winme support disk by Mike
Mike
Sun Dec 19 20:46:38 CST 2004
Win Me extended support continues until 30 June 2006. Support for IE5.5
SP2 continues until 31 Dec 2005 and that for IE6 SP1 ends 31 Dec 2006.
After that time all support will be via peer to peer newsgroups such as
this. I have no knowledge as to when users will no longer be able to
download patches from the Windows Update site but that will not be before
end June 2006.
The disk you are referring contained critical patches and updates to end
Oct 2003 and was called the security update CD. This was released in Feb
2004 and withdrawn around Sept 2004 although may still be obtained in some
countries by contacting Microsoft by phone.
You cannot reinstall Win Me using the security update CD, to do that you
require either your Microsoft or OEM Win Me CD or OEM recovery CD. If you
have no Win Me CD then I would advise you to back up a copy of the folder
containing BASE2.CAB. This folder will also contain some of the more
critical updates including the 290700 patch for system restore that you
have downloaded from the Windows Update site but not updated versions of
Internet Explorer. To reinstall Win Me, either clean of over itself, all
that is necessary is to run the copy of setup.exe in the folder containing
BASE2.CAB however if reinstalling Win Me over itself rather than clean it
is essential to first uninstall IE6 and WMP9 (if installed). Far better
though IMO is to create a backup image of your system partition but that
is only practicable if you are running a small system partition (perhaps
2-4 GB or so) with your data, etc. located on other partitions.
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP
mike.maltby@gmail.com
until Ed Mc <namvtn@whatdayaknow.com> wrote:
> Mike M wrote:
>> Could you please explain what you mean by "Win Me Support Disk"? Are
>> you referring to some OEM disk or the Microsoft Win Me CD?
>>
>> The files needed to reinstall Win Me is the entire contents of the
>> folder containing the file BASE2.CAB. This is normally either
>> C:\Windows\Options\Cabs (if Win Me was installed from OEM media) or
>> C:\Windows\Options\Install (if installed from Microsoft media) but
>> could be elsewhere on the system, for example some Compaqs seems to
>> have these files in D:\Windows\Options\Cabs whilst on some PCs these
>> files are located in a Win9x folder. The total size of the folder
>> should be around 153MB and may or may not contain a folder OLS
>> containing cab files used by older versions of AOL and AT&T
>> totalling another 41MB.
> Thanks for reply, Mike.
> I understood Microsoft will soon no longer provide support for
> WindowsME. With this in mind they released a support CD. I thought
> this CD has all the critical updates etc. If I'm correct the CD was free
> to
> all registered users.
> In regard to your reply, my OS is installed from a legal MS WinME
> upgrade disk. Whenever I use it, I then must go to Windows Update and
> get all the critical updates, again.
> I'd like to backup, or copy, my system files so if I need to
> reinstall, when MS no longer supports ME, I can do so with all the
> updates etc. For instance, my disk only installs IE5. No service
> pack, etc. I looked for BASE2.cab, as per your reply, and found
> it. Is this all I need backup? TIA.