Windows Me build 2332.2

Windows Me build 2332.2 is the first Developer Release build of Windows Me, and also the earliest available build of the operating system. This build was released to developers on 23 July 1999.

OS Base
This is the first known build to remove the ability to use MS-DOS in real mode. Due to this, Windows no longer truly exits to MS-DOS upon displaying the safe to shutdown screen. Instead, the shutdown screen, temporarily changed to a blue screen (although not necessarily a crash screen) as of this build, is now displayed by the 32-bit virtual machine manager, which plays a chime beep then halts the system upon showing the message. Also in possible relation to the removal of real mode DOS, there is no actual boot screen besides the "first boot" one.

Shell
The shell has been updated to correspond with Windows 2000, including changes to the web view and icons. New customization options have been introduced in Explorer and the Start menu. The Control Panel side pane now contains links to Windows Update and Windows 2000 Support. However, the default background color is still teal instead of Windows 2000-style blue.

Inclusion of files from the Neptune project
This build is remarkable for including 29 files from the Windows Neptune project, as well as files from previous Millennium builds with a version number of 5.00 rather than 4.90. This is the first known build of Windows Me to include such files, although earlier unknown builds are also supposed to include them.

System requirements
This build drops support for 486 CPUs, as it now requires a Pentium processor with a 200 MHz clock frequency or faster. However, it can still be installed on machines with slower processors by starting setup with the  switch. This requirement would later be lowered to 150 MHz by the final release.

Other changes

 * The design of  has been radically changed to resemble that of Windows 2000.
 * The new PCHealth framework for monitoring and reporting bugs is now included. Although there is no proper Help Center yet, there is a new HTML-based bug reporting application (, resources in ).
 * All dialog boxes include an additional "Survey..." option to send feedback to the development team. The button however is non-functional until build 2416.
 * Hibernation is now supported without the need to install special drivers.
 * Although parts of the net crawling feature are already present in, it's unknown if it's already functional and there is no UI to enable or disable it yet.
 * Add Network Place Wizard from Windows 2000 has been added.
 * Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) 1.5 is now included.

Installation

 * When starting setup from Windows 98 Second Edition, there is a chance that setup will crash a few seconds after loading.

Hardware

 * Older USB drivers may not install, while drivers compatible with later versions of the operating system have chances of crashing.

Neptune reference
A total of 29 files with the version number 5.50.5022.1 and the product name Microsoft(R) Neptune (TM) Operating System were found in this Millennium build, the earliest PE timestamp being from 6 July 1999. It is unknown whether this Neptune build was ever compiled.

File differences
The following files have been introduced or removed compared to the RTM build of Windows 98 Second Edition: