When I installed Window Me I had disabled Screen Saver and turned off all Power Settings. If you read the article on installing Windows Me then you know of some of my problems. But later when I enabled Screen Saver and Power Settings the problem with Shutdown failing and later my problems with Frontpage 2000 started.

My problem was with Frontpage 2000. Whenever I tried to save a large file Frontpage 2000 would hang. I noticed that I had no disk activity when Frontpage was trying to save a file. Stranger is that Frontpage 200 would open files just fine. And when I opened the HTML file in WordPad I could make my changes and save it just fine. Only thing I know for sure is that my problems didn't start until I enabled Screen Saver and Power Settings. 

Also Shutdown would fail.

I didn't enable Screen Saver and Power Settings until later in the day after I had completed my Install article. I should also note that Screen Saver and Power setting did nothing. No Screen Saver and no power-off of the monitor and the disk drive. Nothing but problems.

After serious thinking (yea Right!) I came to the conclusion that I have to turn off Screen Saver and disabled any Power Settings. So far, so good.

As of September 18, 2000, 6am PDT I have only one in ten shutdown failures. 

I also noticed that my cursor wasn't responding properly. So I decided to go to the Wacom Web site and download their latest software driver for my tablet. I did. Once installed the cursor worked as advertised. I had a morning appointment so I had to shutdown the system. It worked! 

So now I need to test Screen Saver. Yup, Screen Saver works.

Remember I had problems after I turned on Screen Saver. So now I need to test Shutdown again. Here we go.

Shutdown worked. Now I need to do a longer test of Screen Saver and see if the Power Settings work. If all goes well I will post this at Noon, September 19, 2000. Everything still OK.

My last problem is with DUN. I will not be able to test this problem until after 3pm PDT when school gets out. With a busy ISP the delay while ISP is verifying the Username and Password will give me the opportunity to test the DUN problem and see if upgrading the WACOM drivers also fixed this problem.

Still problems. I have now disabled Turn Off Hard Drives as well as disabling System Standby. After testing shutdown went OK. Need to do some research on Power Management to see if modifications were made with Windows Me vs Windows 98.

If you have never used any of the Power Savings option setting then go to the Desktop Properties > Screen Saver and click on the Settings button in the Energy Savings. The three power settings are set by selecting a time interval from each list box. One of their options is Never.

Next Day:  Somewhere in my zest to remove files from the C: drive I removed something I shouldn't have. So now I need to restore or re-install Windows Me. 

I have been trying to restore Windows Me. Every time I remove some files from the C: drive Windows Me Install states I need to find X more MBs of disk space. The weird thing about this is that every time I removed X amount of MBs from the C: drive the Windows Me Install tells me I need to remove more. The more I removed the more I needed to remove. Really weird. I later find out that my FAT table is corrupted and I needed to run the more complete scandisk than the one that Windows Me Install uses. Still no matter what I do I never have enough space to satisfy Windows Me Install. note: Windows Me knew it was only doing a re-install and wouldn't need as much space as a full install but it appears not to take this into consideration.

I give up. It is now time to restore Windows 98. This is an option because I backed up the older system (Windows 98) during the original install of Windows Me. But when I tried to restore Windows 98 it failed. This could have been my problem. I just don't know and I really don't care. I just want to get back to my various projects including this site.

So now I am going to completely wipe out everything on the C: drive by doing a format and starting from a blank slate. Well almost. More on that later.

The Real Reason My C: Drive Got Stuffed

In a word: newsgroups. I had been going to several newsgroups trying to get a feel for what other users were experiencing with Windows Me and also to find some technical information on Windows Me Shutdown Hibernation option. This is on top of about one years worth of additional newsgroups information. So when the system reported that I was low on disk space on the C: drive I didn't know about Outlook Express and it's storing of everything from mail and newsgroups. If I had unsubscribed to Outlook Express newsgroups I would have saved myself much misery.

What To Do

Now I export whatever information that I find important in a newsgroup and then unsubscribe to all newsgroups.

Close Outlook Express.

The storage folder for Outlook Express is located at: c:\windows\application Data\Microsoft\Outlook Express. If you have more than one user logging on to the workstation then the Outlook Express folder with be at: c:\windows\Profiles\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook Express. username is a unique folder for each user.

the *.mdx files is where the mail for each Outlook Express mail folder is kept.

With mail you need to delete a file but also use notepad to create another (empty) file to replace the one you deleted. Examine the size of the deleted items.mdx. This will probably be the biggest file there. Delete it and create another of the same name using notepad. Now go to the mail folder. You may find the same mail files that were in the Outlook Express folder. If you do repeat the delete and replace with a new and empty file.