Chips right, there's thousands of flash games available, that should play on your old computer. HOSS started a thread several months ago called more browser games. It's grown into rather a large list, with many brilliant browser games, for example Samorost, a fantastic point and click adventure. Here's the link to the thread.

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/3903

Wolfenstein 3d '95-XP', Doom, Grand Theft Auto 2 '95-XP',Pearl Harbour '98-XP', Eureka Software Arcade take you pick on cd in shop '98-XP 'most are free now to down load

"To tell you to buy a new computer for "only" about $ 500.-- is perhaps a little bit beyond your (and mine) reality, but "POOR folks" are those people who don't have enough food for their kids."

Notblocklox, I assure you I have been there plenty of times, although my husband did make sure our kids had *something* to eat. We aren't that poor now, but are too poor to be able to go out and buy one of the computers I mentioned. Oh, and I wasn't telling NotaClue to go out and buy one, but was merely telling him/her about them. S/He did say, and I quote "or save up enough to get a better machine". :)

Sue

Well, I'm not going to sit here and repeat what my friends have already told you. All I have to say is, if all else fails, try online games. There's millions of free and fun online games that you can play that require no download. A quick google search should point you in the right direction. But here's one I like :)

http://www.fetchfido.co.uk/games/menu/games_menu.htm

Caiman is a brilliant site. I use it to source quite a lot of the games I post in the free games for the day project.

Hi, NotaClue, here is a good place for asking about games and here is a good place to browse all the already made suggestions. The momentary games crew - just like dozens of other users before - recommended hundred of links for older games, for older systems and even for us older gamers.
Now you have only the exhausting job to read, choose and play.
One of my favourites for older games (my old 486 with win 3.11 is still going strong and faster as the newer one) is http://www.caiman.us/ (often posted here).
I know Me made some headaches for gamers.
What about your plans to install XP? Some time ago you got a lot of answers from a lot of our helpful friends.
To tell you to buy a new computer for "only" about $ 500.-- is perhaps a little bit beyond your (and mine) reality, but "POOR folks" are those people who don't have enough food for their kids. May I bring back to you the answer penneddragon had for you? Did you try that? Second hand hardware is really cheap to get, and in your family or neighbourhood you might find someone who will help you with your PC in return for your famous home-made pizza :)

doublecheesepizzalox

Try gametop as well. there's around 80 commercial games that are being given away free (I say commercial because they are still being sold elsewhere). there's also loads of games to be found via the Games Synopsis (on the front page of the forums as a sticky)that will probably work on your system:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/4534

Also check out the following site, they have loads of recently released games that do work on Win 98 and ME. You have to pay for them ($6.99 to $9.99), but there are downloadable demos available too:

http://www.hotgamedownloads.com/os/windows_98_se

I hope this helps.

Regards

Whiterabbit

p.s.

http://www.gametop.com

You might give the following a try!

http://www.freegamepick.com/en/

They have free games, and list what windows OS they require on the download page of each game, under 'System Requirements'. ;o)

If this helps let me know and I'll find you some more sites!!

-mm

I would think that many 95 and 98 games would be compatible. ME is the final offspring of that DOS based family. And, of course, DOS games should mostly work, too.

NotaClue, how old is your computer? Even if it's as "old as the hills", it should run *something*. I have a 9 year old Gateway that still is 'holding its own', that I can do everything on, except play DVDs. Oh, and it boasts an 18/19 GB hard drive, too...lol. It came with WinMe, but has been upgraded to XP. I said all that to say this - if your machine is about the same age mine is, I'd say you either have some hardware issues going on, or you just need to do a good 'spring cleaning' on it. If it's the hardware and an old machine, I'd say get a new computer. I'm not a cerified computer tech, now, and someone else may have better advice for you, but I am just sharing with you what I think/know...:). BTW, you can get a new computer/laptop, these days, for $500.00 or less. In fact, right now Walmart has a Toshiba laptop on sale for $398.00 (+ tax of course). It runs Windows Vista Home Basic. You might be able to get that one. :)

Sue

Have very limited resources right now and only machine I can run has Me on it.....None of the games will run....Say update ....update system etc then goes to black.....I just want a few match three games....word games.....anything that will run on this machine until I either hit the lottery....or save up enough to get a better machine......any suggestions?

You will. I'm sure you will post some interesting stuff here. And don't discount the values of spreading good feelings. So, you've already returned the favor. And you're welcome, too.

Thank you w13....I have program called metapad which some kind soul linked to before and I was alert enough to get, so will use it to save all help offered. You are a kind person to help so much. Mr WRabbit..I like your posts and consider your help above most. Thanks to all who offer to help us lame ducks!!! I'd be condemed to watching t.v. if not for the help of persons like you....Just wish I could return the favor some day

Hi scubaguy; I hope all is well with you? Regards

Whiterabbit

Hi Watcher13

I am not sure as to what level of geekness Nota is at,so I tried to give her/him as many options as possible in the link above. Hope at least one of our sugestions will help.
Just trying to pay it forward, for the many times members have helped me in my time of need.
I see by your profile you are somewhat new here so,A big welcome to the forums!

Good idea, scuba. Thanks for helping nota, although, I might suggest that since it's just text, nota, you can highlight what you need, copy it, and paste it into a new notepad or wordpad document. Or you can just save the whole webpage in your browser. With any of the 3 ways, you don't have to be connected to look at the suggestions.

For NotaClue
As I said in the other thread,below.

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/4614/page/2#post-49889

I have made a post here so it will bring your thread to the top of main page for you to locate, I hope the suggestions I made at the above link will help.

Another way to save the information that was given by the other members,would be if you have a snipet or screen capture program,use it to save only the info you want to use,and can then view it offline if you wish.

My last off topic post on this one, I promise. Your being too hard on yourself, penneddragon. You run on because you've got a lot to say. You broke up your first post with paragraphs. Sometimes, folks just get too busy to dot all the I's and cross all the T's. We've pretty much all been there and done that. By the way, I didn't post those Gizmo pages to correct you. I didn't catch it. I just posted those links to point nota and others to those specific pages. :)

I'm not upset Watcher13. If I seemed to be I didn't mean it. Copmom, you can understand my joy then at finding the stupid little flanged jumpers on an old motherboard. I keep them next to my only piece of good china, a cup with a chicken on it, under a glass cake dish centerpiece thing. I really need to look up synonyms for "thing". I know Archangel a little bit. I emailed him a while back. He is very knowledgeable and helpful. Again, Watcher13, I really liked your response to my run on paragraph. I just don't communicate very well...I wind up annoying all of my friends and they wash away until the tide washes them back again. They're all on the high seas now so I had time to respond maybe more than I should have. Oh, there I see one on the far horizon...No..no, it's my daughter's friend. She wants to know how to turn off the antivirus and firewall that is keeping her from going to the website she got the virus from that made her have to "let" me spend three days reinstalling her system..... She wouldn't "let" me show her how to clone a drive and she wouldn't buy one so I could do it for her. If it wasn't for my daughter glaring at me...I'd let her technophobe friend float right on back out to sea...

I gotta go to class and find out how to use today's software...

Gizmo's website is not techsupport.com it is techsupportalert.com. Really thank you for correcting that Watcher. His site is great! But Raymond.cc's rocks!!! IMHO. ;)

Can't help but laughing at all the lost jumpers getting lost, either in the carpet or inside the case behind one of the installed drives.. they DO jump. Someone gave me a tip on removing them.. use an opened paper clip to snag it. Some jumpers have a little teensy wire on top that you can snag it with instead of tweezers (which they always "boing" out of)! Whenever I get rid of a machine, I keep my old hard drives so I keep the jumpers in a teensy ziplock in case I can't find the lost ones.

I think you understood penneddragon that I was complimenting you, not criticizing. Thought I'd post just in case. That's really good stuff, I recommend nota looks over everything you've written. I lose my jumpers in the carpet a lot, too. I don't know if I mentioned in the other forum, I'm from Pittsburgh. Moved to Somerset 26 years ago, and then Richmond 24 years ago. I was stationed in Sicily in the Navy. Know one other forum member from Kentucky. Archangel lives in Western Kentucky.

That great tech site was http://www.raymond.cc not co. He has a daily blog you can sign up for, too.

The plastic thingy I was talking about comes on the hard drive and the placement of the jumper, jumper setting, tells the computer whether you want the drive to be a master or a slave or cable select. It was critical with the old 40 pin cable that it match your IDE connector Black Master or Grey Slave. There is usually a jumper setting diagram on the cover of the hard drive indicating the placement of each setting. Most Hard drives come jumpered as Master. I always change it to cable select CS. I always have to dig the stupid jumper out of the carpet because my manual dexterity has taken a nose dive lately. I'm not sure how the SATA drives work. They may all be masters since there is only one device per red cable. Or it may not even be an issue with them. Its cool I can put four SATA drives and three ATA drives on my computer's motherboard. The power supply would never take the strain, and where do you mount the drives in the case...
Oh well, I'm lucky to afford one drive. Good luck Nota!

http://www.couchsurfing.com is a worldwide project.

Watcher13 sorry to give you a headache. I just didn't want Nota to make some of the mistakes I've made or seen made.

I was so busy writing to Nota I missed the Inauguration. You can get the text of it on the http://www.gutenberg.org free book site.

I'm from Kentucky too. Lived in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and California. I saw the Where are you from thread. Seems like a lot of forum folks like to travel. Lived in Italy and England a couple of years myself. I just found a web site called http://www.couchsurfing.com. My brother asked me how they keep the couch on the surface of the water. Anyway you host travelers on your couch or guest room and they return the favor when you're in their neck of the woods. I had a couple from Hawaii here for a few days. Nice folks.

http://www.Raymond.co website is great, too, Nota. Computerhope.com is supposed to be helpful to people. Nota, there are new IDE cables available that are folded/accordianed up into a flexible, cylindrical sleeve so that they are not so obstructive of airflow in the case. The kids are all getting that kind. Rather they were until the Serial ATA drives came out and use entirely different connector cables. I got a real helpful set of tools at Frys Electronics that has the power supply and USB cable and adaptors to make any drive, ATA, SATA or Notebook drive into an external hard disk drive. Mine was $25. The reason I push cloning is because the computer techs charge so much to reinstall systems these days. My daughter's friend was to have paid $255 for a basic reinstall at a local establishment. She got an aggressive virus that knocked out her restore partition. She had already paid $126 for an evaluation of the computer. Thanks for the clarification of my scribbles!

Thanks a lot k! I get smarter every day and, for me, that's a real accomplishment! :)

See, Nota? I told you there were a lot smarter people than I was lurking around here! There's some other good options for you. You should look over all this good info.

Windows comes with a partition tool and ways to dual boot, but many people find them probematic. I was hoping folks would recommend their favorite partition utility and boot manager, or Virtual partition creater, and may yet. But I forgot that Gizmo's site, that penneddragon mentioned, has active pages on both the best free partitioning tools and the best free ghosting tools.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/best-free-partition-manager.htm
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-drive-imaging-program.htm

Power Quest Partition that Lee mentioned is no longer in production. Power Quest was sold years ago and some of it's Partiiton's features have been bundled into other software. You might want to go with something newer.

Nota, I'm kicking myself for not remebering Gizmo's site. It's a great site that I strongly recommend. It evaluates the best freeware for all kinds of things and the best part of that is that it's editors pay serious attention to it's comments section. They test suggestions the posters make and therefore keep their lists up to date. The comments are a little goofy to read. They're in reverse order with latest first (which is not uncommon), but replies to a particular comment are posted under that comment, offset from the main comment, so you kind of go back and forth between reading up and reading down. Just takes a little getting used to. Also, it has forums for advice and many tutorials. Very useful!

Whew penneddragon! I think my heads gonna explode! That's good stuff. A couple of quick reactions to what was said, nota. In the long run, learning to clone maybe the best advice here. You should definitely check out the sights with how to videos. Shoulda recommended that myself. To exaggerate a little, you can find videos that will practically take you down to the smallest screws. But, just so you know, the little plastic thingy that penneddragon correctly mentioned to move back and forth between MA(ster), (SL)ave, or (best option if you have the cable) Cable Select (CS) positions on a hard drive is called a jumper. I've seen them in white and black. A few, a least some older ones I've seen, of the hard drive data cables don't have a key, so they can accidentally be put in backwards. The red wire is meant to go to pin 1 of the 40 pin connectors on the drive and the motherboard. Sometimes another way you can avoid confusion is because pin 1 on both motherboard and drive is often marked. Cable select compatible cables are often color coded. The blue connector goes on the motherboard, the black on the master and the grey on the slave drive.

Haven't used ME myself, but the consensus opinion is certainly that it's the biggest dog that MS ever produced. I'd guess even most Vista haters would agree that ME is worse, so you ought to be really happy when you go to XP. I'm not sure if many programs written for ME would actually damage your XP registry, although XP and ME are from different families and there registries are significantly different, but the bottom line is trying to run programs from your ME slave drive while running XP is probably not going to go smoothly. Really, trying to replace that software with XP versions or trying to find alternatives is the way to go. Or dual booting.

To elaborate on what I said in an earlier post, the safest, but certainly not the easiest, is to use your setup program when you turn on the computer to switch whether the master or slave drive boots the computer. Most setup programs (also called BIOS or CMOS) allow you to do that. When you first turn on you'll see a message somewhere on your screen that says "press esc (or F1, or F10, (etc...) to enter setup. It won't hurt you to get to know your setup because you can't accidentally mess up anything. The program will always ask you if you want to save any changes you made. Just say no, if your just poking around. You don't have to worry about most of the settings. Almost all are now managed by Windows, anyway. It should give you options on which order your disk should boot the computer. You simply change from disk0 (master) to disk1 (slave). And then change back when you want to boot in master. Pretty much foolproof but a little bit of a hassle. Almost foolproof and a lot easier is using the built in dual boot configuration option in XP (modifying the boot.ini file cimmind was talking about). You need to add a new line to the file pointing to the slave drive and the OS (ME), but I haven't found the exact syntax so I haven't posted it. That gives you a menu asking if you want to boot from XP or ME when you startup. I'm sure someone here knows it. If you mess it up, though, you may have to boot from your XP CD or make the ME drive the master again, boot from it, and restore XPs boot.ini file (from a copy you were wise enough to make, first!). A recoverable error. Putting them both on the same drive and using a 3rd party boot manager is also easy, but since Windows doesn't always play well with even it's own brothers and sisters, you may have to work out a few bugs. That's true with running XP virtually, which is also pretty easy.

Good luck! And let us know your progress.

I did run in 2001 ME and XP dual boot.

ME was installed on J: and XP C: partition respectively.

I had power quest partition and boot manager.

Lee is right IMO about Me being the worst OS Windows developed.

Don't forget to check the obvious stuff on the XP computer that won't go. Change the black power cord with the working one and try plugging it into a different outlet. Outlet's go bad and black cords go bad. You can buy a new one at Radio Shack or get off of used thrift shop computer or monitor. Try to vacuum out the computer and power supply and fans with the hose part/attachment of a vacuum cleaner. Can use the compressed air in a can sold at electronic stores, but you should do it outside (can cause an asthma or allergy attack if you do it inside). Should do it once a year or twice if you have a cat or pet in the house. You can buy a power supply tester at and electronic store. But if the fan isn't blowing when you turn the power supply on from the power supply on off switch, it's probably broken. Most people don't know you have to change the button battery in your computer. Gizmo's website is techsupport.com. He has some videos for doing some stuff. Raymond.cc is also a great site. Before you unplug anything you should draw a diagram of what it looks like before you take it apart. I used a permanent marker to show what connector went where. You can use masking tape, too. You should touch the case to ground out the electricity in your hands before you touch boards in your computer. Just the static electricity alone can kill your motherboard (or you can buy an antistatic bracelet at an electronics store that will ground out the body's static charge. About cloning I strongly urge you to get a college kid or tech student to show you how to do it the first time. You have to be very careful which drive you select as the source and which as the destination or you can clone the empty new drive to the full old drive and wind up with two completely blank drives! I took my old drive and put it in a $20 case/shell and made it and external drive. Laptop drives are especially good for this because they are about the size of a cigarette box and you can scan all the pictures of all your family members and take them to all of your kids. I live in California and we get hit by fires all the time. Having a backup offsite of important documents and photos could save you some grief if something like a fire were to hit your home and destroy your photos and your hard drive. The plastic thingy in the back of the hard drive is about as wide as the letters 'as' are. They are very hard to extract and easy to lose in the carpet and are essential to the operation of the hard drive in the IDE configuration. I found some on an old computer that had a flange on them that made them easier to extract and reposition. Pay attention to which screws you took from where. I tape them to a piece of paper and write where I got them from. The diagram is essential..you think you will remember what goes where, but it's not always that clear when you try to put things back together. One of my classmates is named Smoky now 'cause he was too lazy to mark the connectors or draw a diagram. Smoky has grey hair and an engineering degree and one less computer. People never have the time to do something right, but they always have the time to do it over. The IDE cable connectors are keyed on one long side. The key notch is tiny. I just wrote a big T on the tops of my connectors before I took them out. If you try to force the long IDE connectors in you can bend one of the 40 pins on the hard drive. You don't want to do that. You don't have to unplug the IDE cable to disconnect the hard drive, you can just unplug the plastic thingy...molex power connector on the back. If you didn't mark the top of the connector and you can't see the key notch, there is usually a red wire running lengthwise on the cable. That red wire side is usually positioned close to the hard drive's power connector. The molex connector is keyed to in that two of its edges are beveled so it can only go in one way. If you need a longer cord or another molex connector, they sell Y-adaptor molex connectors that give you an extra power connector from your power supply. Memory sticks and video cards have locks on the motherboard connectors. Look for the plastic levers on the ends and unlock them before you try to take them out or put them in. You should watch some videos on how to build your own computer on Youtube, Guba, eHow, or Expertvillage so you will know what's what when you crack your computer open. Unplug your computer anytime you do anything to it. If you plug it in to test something, unplug it again before you remove or insert something. Never work on a monitor the electricity stored in it can be deadly even unplugged. If you buy something with a rebate on it, don't cut the UPC off of the box and send in for the rebate before you know that the thing actually works in your computer. You can't return something you turned in a rebate for. They make hard drives that use IDE cables (ATA, IDE); newer hard drives (SATA serial ATA) that use a skinny red cable; and small laptop hard drives. You can put any of them into your computer with the right adaptor ($8-$10). You only need one DVD player/recorder (make sure it records as well as plays DVDs-some say DVD on them but only play DVDs). If you put a bunch of stuff in your computer you might need a bigger power supply. If your PS2 mouse or keyboard stops working, you can buy a USB one and keep using your computer. You can unplug your monitor and any USB connected device while your computer is on, but don't unplug any other type of connector while it is on, except the power cord to the wall and internet connector cord. http://www.download.com and http://www.cnet.com, and http://www.frewarefiles.com are cool places for free software. Set or create a new restore point before you install new software. If it messes up your system you can "go back" to the previous installation state with Start>Help and Support Center>Undo changes to your computer with System Restore>Restore my computer to an earlier time. Run Malwarebytes and Spybot Search and Destroy every week. Keep your antivirus up to date.

watcher13
"I'm assuming you realize that you can't run an upgrade as a seperate OS, at least I've never heard of it."

Yes you can. I use a XP upgrade on my old ThinkPad. I am asked during install for a full version disk of Windows. It can be any previous version of Windows, or even a full version of XP. I place it in the CD tray, Windows checks the disk, and reboots, and asks that you place the upgrade disk in the tray again, and it installs just fine as a clean install, not an upgrade. ;)

I just ask a computer tech (friend of mine) what might happen if you used the XP drive as the Master in your ME machine. (btw... he says ME stands for My Enemy ;) )
He said it should work, but you will likely have a few driver issues. That can be solved by installing the proper drivers.

This is what I would do, (assuming you can't fix the XP machine)......

Setup the XP drive as the Master, and leave the ME disconnected at this point.
Boot up, and if it works, get on line and go to http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/
Download DriverMax (it's free) and install, then run it. It will help you find drivers you need. I use it, and it works well.
One you get XP running to your satisfaction, you can connect the ME drive as a Slave, so you can move or copy any files you need, to the main drive. But be careful not run any programs installed on the ME drive, as this will screw up the registry. Also don't move or copy any 'installed' programs from ME to the XP drive, files only.

At this point you can disconnect the ME drive and set it aside, or reformat the drive, and use it for storage/backups/downloads/whatever.

I agree completely with Lee, ME is junk!

Windows Millennium is a piece of junk.

Save all you personal items to an external hard drive, or a large thumb drive,
or LS 120, or a large zip disk.

Then install XP as a standalone operating system.

Unless you are a developer it's pointless having more than one ops (operating system)
installed.

If your old software don't work on XP try the compatibility function.
Or visit the authors site for an updated version that supports XP.

Windows Millennium was a rush job, it is the worst ops ever written by Microsoft.

When you have XP up and running, visit amazon and sell Windows Millennium there.

Currently at amazon.co.uk it's on offer by a private seller for £114 new (cheapest)
to £16.99 used (cheapest).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_?url=search-alias%3Dsoftware&field-keywords=Windows+Millennium&x=17&y=17

You will enjoy Windows XP, as long as you have correct drivers and compatible software you can kiss good bye to BSOD.