That's true, but the boot manager needs the autoexec.bat file to enable it to boot into windows... this because ME doesn't support DOS command lines. However, the capability is there in ME to do so, and a small utility "unlocks" the command line- hence the autoexec.bat file.
Frankly, I'd prefer to use Linux and forget windows, but I don't yet understand Linux well enough to go with it.
One thing I will do, is get a new HDD and use larger partitions. Not sure why Windows would need a larger partition than 2 Gb if the Swapfile has its' own dedicated partition... but then I'm no expert, I just partitioned it according to some magazine article that I read a while back.
The kicker is that my Win95 OSR2.1 installation was stable and crash-free, with none of these problems... seriously thinking about going back to that for the time being.