WINDOWS ME INSTALLATION PROCESS

Manufacturers of operating systems provide minimum and recommended hardware specifications that should be considered before installing or upgrading an OS. The minimum system requirement for Windows Me can be found on Microsoft’s Windows Me site at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=253695.

The basic system requirements are:

• Pentium 150MHz processor or better

• 32MB of RAM

• Minimum 320MB of hard drive space (formatted as FAT32)

• CD/DVD-ROM drive

  Note

  These are the very basic system requirements. Different hardware is required for some of Windows Me features (e.g., Movie Maker requires more memory).

Before You Start

As always, you should check the manufacturer’s recommended hardware requirements for operating system installation. Next, make sure that you have the correct version of the Windows Me installation CD-ROM that fits your needs. There are two version of Windows Me available, the full version and the upgrade version. The upgrade version requires a previous version of Windows 95, 98, or 98 Second Edition installed on your hard drive for installation. (At the very least, you must have the CD-ROM with one of those operating systems on it to verify that you are doing an upgrade.) Both the upgrade and the full version can be installed on a hard drive on a separate partition from a nonupgradeable OS (such as Windows NT); but only the full version can be used to install on a completely blank hard drive, should you not own a copy of Windows 95, 98, or 98 Second Edition (more on that later). Remember, OEM disks were designed for specific systems and do not work as a full installation on all systems (which can subsequently cause problems with trying to use nonbootable OEM CD-ROMs in the installation process).