Good Luck!
But one question, if I may.........why didn't you leave it alone after that ONE time out of 5??

Splash, Just to point out what you probably already know: You can use the XP upgrade CD to do a full clean install. Just boot with the upgrade CD and during the setup process it will ask you to insert your Win2K CD (or other qualifying version) to verfiy you are authorized to use the upgrade CD.

And also, don't you have to go through the rubbish of formatting and partitioning and stuff? My computer also never came with a master CD for the factory preset configuratrion and if I reformat and re-partition and stuff, I will probably end up wiping the hidden partition full of this stuff which they gave me instad of a master CD.

FYI, OEM means 'Original Equipment Manufacturer'

I was just, reading an article about XP in Maximum PC, where they mention you should have a 1.2GHz CPU and 256MB of memory to get the full advantage of XP. Or have at least 800MHz CPU and 256MB of RAM.
Now I'm not sure about these numbers, I know my system falls short, and that Microsoft system req. on the box is going to to be far less then the specs in the article. I wonder which is closer to fact. How does you systems meet the two power specs?

Well, I'm back, and everything is at least holding the illusion of working well for now. Let's try and answer a few of those questions:

Koasati: There comes a time in every person's life when they must reformat. I am cursed with an innate stupidity that makes me do it out of habit every few months. It's a habit carried forward from my win9x days, when such a thing was necessary. I find that after a reformat, there's less crap on my system that I don't actually need, and my machine runs a lot smoother and faster.

Splash!: No, I have the full version, MSDN edition (which means that you don't pay for it, you just convince your boss that it's a good idea to pay for it).

Griffinme: Onboard sound and video cards are the devil. I have an ATI Radeon 8500, which due to ATI's infamously terrible driver support, is probably to blame for a great deal of my problems, such as mIRC crashing whenever somebody pms me when it's skinned, or Advanced Administrative Tools giving strange errors whenever it tries to display any of those fancy Delphi tooltips with little pictures in them.

Jim: P4-1500 with 640MB of SDRAM, which should be more than enough. Of course, even if my machine barely met the minimum spec, it should just be slow, not a perpetual crash.

Personally I blame all of the manufacturers who had anything whatsoever to do with my machine. Intel, Microsoft and ATI are all horrible monsters and I pray for their death. I have given serious thought to going back to Win2k, but to be honest I don't really recall any more if that was much better, and I've grown used to some of the pleasantries that XP has graced me with. I think what I need is a shiny new machine, but unfortunately I don't think my local hardware supplier would give me much for 7 cents, some pocket fluff and a button.

AJC.

266 , 160meg of ram with real video and sound cards is much more stable then the faster machine with soldered on video and sound.

I've got 800Mhz Celeron with 192Mb RAM. And a page file!

My HDD is NTFS too.

Oh OK, it looks like the power of the system has little to do with the problems. Sorry about the delay in getting back, (I bet this message is just about over).

Yes I've used Microsoft Tech Support, the $35.00 an issue type. They where great, they stayed with me until the problem was fixed, all three hours and two phone calls. I can't say enough good things about them.

OK, I was thinking about going to XP, until I read that article, my system being a PII 700MHz, 512MB RAM, 100BUS I have an old motherboard to Asus P3B-F. But after reading this I have new hope.

I think those specs for XP are crazy, and they are not Microsoft's specs. I run XP just fine on a pentium III 600mhz with 256 RAM (with all of the Object Desktop stuff running) and have had no problems. (unlike a very similar box running...gasp...ME)

I believe that Microsoft specs are 233mhz (300 recommended) and 128 RAM (a bit different from a 800mhz with 256 RAM)

I'm glad some of us have good stries to tell. Mine would be good if only there wasn't annoying problems. But I'm sure it'll be fixed soon.

feline looks up from piles of paper on desk

whats this? starone needs tickling till she goes pink?

feline thinks i may be able to arrange something

I've been running XP Professional on my system, PII 233Mhz, 320Mb Ram, 8Mb Matrox video card and a 3Gb hard drive. No problems at all to report, runs smooth as silk.