Hi all,
i'm dual booting Win Me/Debian GNU/Linux v3 and I'm asking: is Microsoft joking? An example: I can't have my computer secured against local attacks, everyone can login with just hitting the cancel button! Any tips of disabling these "features" would be appreciated!

Never found out how to do that or some other annoying things.

Not that strange, since WinME has to be the very worst Windows ever released. You are better off with 98, if you just have to run that crap. 2000 and XP are fine though... not great by any means either, but usable ^_^.

On the other hand, Win ME is the most secure Microsoft OS ever - It's hard enough to get online, that there's no hope of anyone from outside coming in ;-D

gheheheh, that's so true

the windows 9x line is just a GUI wrapper for DOS, a single person, 1 user, 1 program OS

it was extended with muilt-user and mulitasking capabilities (altho poorly), its still a single user system, meaning no login, but is (among its multi user extensions into windows) a option in configure of login screen, and multiple accounts ...

(and the default login sucked: example: with at&t cable Internet (some time back) the WinME computer we had booted into a login screen for the network (obviously this wasn't needed, but you would put your username & password for the computer in, and it would sign you into the computer to), but if you put a fake name (or non, or wrong password) you would get past the network stuff, but land in the system usual login screen: and here the example of bad security: if you put a users name in the network login screen, and a bad password, then in the system login screen, change the name to yours, and put in your password, then you would be logged into the account you entered at the network screen (hmm, i couldn't duplicate that on win98 (or was it win95?) ........ shows how much badder WinME was at security (not to mention the corruption/error rate ...... Win98 the best out of the 9x line, and some would say even the nt line was badder then Win98

I refer SciYro to:

Rules For Clear Writing
http://www.jumbojoke.com/000425.html

Of course, Windows 98 can be bashed, too:
http://www.jumbojoke.com/000419.html

Nowadays, you need like 26 passwords just to get to your email: you could add a boot password, windows password, network login password, internet security password, browser boot password, the list could go on and on. But I'm glad the trend is towards at least a better attempt of security on windows.

Which is why I use linux

- Flyashi

P.S. Of course, it's tough to let go to an OS you've been using for decades (Wow, it's been 10 years since '95). So I have dual boot <-- hard to set up, but well worth it!

Yep, i also believe that Windows 9x are only a GUI for MS-DOS, but WinMe is more a standalone OS because it has eliminated everything which has to do with real mode DOS (ahhh, the old good times of the Intel 8088, Commodore 64 and IBM-PC). Well, i've downloaded the Win95 security policy editor to try to make some use of Microsoft's "security"... Everyone heared of Xenix, Microsoft's Unix..That should be fun LOL!

You can secure Microsoft if you aviod using Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.

# Basic Microsoft Windows security
Firewall: ZoneAlarm
Virus protection: AntiVir

#Multi spyware removal utilities:
Lavasoft
Spy-bot

# Microsoft Windows tools
Belarc Advisor - Free Personal PC Audit - builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, including Microsoft Hotfixes, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server.
Driver Cleaner - Driver Cleaner is a program which helps you to remove parts of drivers that are left after uninstalling the old drivers. The program is for ATI and nVidia drivers. First you need to uninstall the drivers from the control panel than reboot and after that run the program. If you really want a good description of what steps you should do than you really need to read the readme file included in the zip file and installation as it contains a detailed description step by step.
Download the Mega-Codec pack and never worry about codecs again! The Mega-Codec pack allows custom installation. It will let you install any and all codecs that you can imagine, plus their own media player will play .mov and .rm files. It even comes with Quicktime and Realmedia plugins for Mozilla/Opera browsers.
GNUWin II - Lots of freeware from the Open Source community

# Microsoft Windows help sites
Windows BBS
Computing.net
Annoyances.org
BlackViper.com mirror
Microsoft's Computer Management
DSL Tweaks

Wow, what all you know... Thanks!