Windows Me
personal computer operating system by Microsoft released in 2000
Windows Me (Millennium Edition) is an operating system developed by Microsoft as the last in the Windows 9x line of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the successor to Windows 98, and was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, and then to retail on September 14, 2000. It was Microsoft's main operating system for home users until the introduction of the NT-based Windows XP on October 25, 2001.
Windows Me was targeted specifically at home PC users, and included Internet Explorer 5.5 (which could later be upgraded to Internet Explorer 6), Windows Media Player 7 (which could later be upgraded to Windows Media Player 9 Series), DirectX 7 (which could later be upgraded to DirectX 9) and the new Windows Movie Maker software, which provided basic video editing and was designed to be easy to use for consumers; it is the last MS-DOS-based Windows version as all consumer versions starting with Windows XP moved to the NT kernel. Microsoft also incorporated features first introduced in Windows 2000, which had been released as a business-oriented operating system seven months earlier, into the graphical user interface, shell and Windows Explorer. Although Windows Me was still ultimately based around MS-DOS like its predecessors, access to real-mode DOS was restricted to decrease system boot time.
Windows Me was positively received upon release, but soon attracted significant criticism for stability problems, and is today viewed as one of the worst Windows versions, as well as one of the worst operating systems of all time. In October 2001, Windows XP was released to the public, having already been under development at the time of Windows Me's release, and incorporated most, but not all, of the features of Windows Me, while being far more stable.
After the release of Windows XP, mainstream support for Windows Me ended on December 31, 2003, and extended support for Windows 98, 98 SE and Me ended on July 11, 2006.
Development history
At the 1998 Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates stated that Windows 98 would be the last iteration of Windows to use the Windows 9x kernel, with the intention for the next consumer-focused version to be based on the Windows NT kernel, unifying the two branches of Windows.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Windows Me” as personal computer operating system by Microsoft released in 2000. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as personal computer operating system by Microsoft released in 2000. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q484892. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Windows Me” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.