What is Windows Millennium, anyway?

Windows Millennium

Windows Millennium is the last in a series of the Windows 9x operating systems that were designed to be a better DOS than DOS, a better Windows 3.yuk than Windows 3.yuk, and run 32-bit software written for NT. Since this "mission impossible" brief was met in 1995, the emphasis has changed; the success of Windows 9x became assured, Windows 3.yuk generally faded away, and compatibility with DOS games became of less concern as new DirectX titles emerged.

Microsoft would prefer to migrate users over from Windows 9x to NT, which has become more fleshed out and friendly from the consumer's point of view. Since version 4.0, NT grew Plug-n-Play, DirectX and finally learned how to defrag itself and support FAT32 volumes. The latest iterations of these two operating systems bear names that obscure their roots; NT 5 was called Windows 2000, and the new Windows 9x was called Windows Millennium.

To confuse things further, MS arbitrarily imposed NT-like limitations on Windows Millennium; it is incapable of booting into DOS mode from the hard drive, and no longer processes code loads from Config.sys or Autoexec.bat, which are now controlled by the OS rather than the user. Perhaps this is why some people mistakenly talk of Windows Millennium as an "NT Lite", which it is not (that is what Windows XP Home will be).

Windows Millennium is a strange mix of finally-got-it-right Win9x polish, semi-assed new features that will hopefully be perfected in Windows XP, and the arbitrary limitations mentioned above. There's a "new arrogance" evident in the way the new features are integrated into the system; unlike old accessories like the Calculator or WordPad, you cannot de-select nor uninstall far larger new toys such as Movie Maker or Windows Media Player.

There's also a more "editorialized" approach to the OS, in that assumptions are made about what type of user you are and what you are likely to do - whereas an OS should really be an application-neutral platform for whatever you want to do. For example, new system-level add-ons make it more difficult and dangerous to work with arbitrary hard drives added to the system; every volume seen by the OS will have a \_Restore directory created on it, with a single-byte file created within this. That's only 2 data clusters, but more than what is safe for an insane file system - and there's no DOS mode to work from instead.

Based on my experience, I'd say the main problem issues are:

Lack of DOS mode, or suitable replacement maintenance OS
System Restore, in certain situations
System File Protection, vs. risk management
Changes to auto-Scandisk that make it harder to control
Control of obtrusive data locations

But there's much to like in Windows Millennium, too - which is what makes it so frustrating; if it was same as Windows 98 only worse, you'd be missing nothing by staying with that. Here are some things they got right:

Explorer "knows" CD drives take long to spin up; no more "not ready" errors
You can finally avoid "View As Web Page" - but not per-folder anymore
Taskbar, Start Menu and file type management are much improved
The user interface is a bit prettier, for what that's worth

PC Health

The new features bound into Windows Millennium fall into two categories; add-on fluff like Windows Media Player and Movie Maker, and core system functionalities that are grouped together as PC Health. The latter group include:

System File Protection
System Restore
System Information (part of Help and Support)
Windows Update

System File Protection and System Restore overlap in that both are run from *statemgr that is run from the registry on startup. This builds backup data in C:\_RESTORE, which is used by System Restore to fall back to a previous state. The other PC Health item in the startup axis (and Tasks) builds another set of data that is merely used to describe the system via System Information, for the erudition of user and tech support. Both subsections of the PC Health group of technologies can be a nuisance sometimes, and it's nice that they can be amputated separately should the need arise.

Bottom line

If one puts in a bit of work, there's no reason to ask for Windows 98 Second Edition instead of Millennium with a new system, unless you need to run tricky old DOS apps (max conventional memory, Config.sys or Autoexec.bat loads) or DOS-dependent (Config.sys or Autoexec.bat drivers) hardware within Windows. It's quite possible to manage the issues, though it helps if you have a previous Windows 95 SR2.x, 98, or 98 SE to hand to add back some of the useful bits Millennium threw away.

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