I've finally managed to get a (hopefully) clean XP sp2 installation up and running on my home PC. It wasn't as smooth as I'd expect, however it was MUCH smoother than the XP sp1 installation previously mentioned. I ended up having to install it 3 times in total before arriving at this clean installation.
- Installation went well. "Only" 4 devices were not provided for by drivers. (USB and Ethernet were found, that wasn't the case in SP1) The computer acted strangely frrom the outset. It was laggy, meaning that the mouse (and everything else) froze every (approx) 10 second. I'd tried that before on anther computer and the it was a problem with the driver for the harddisk controller. Hence I tried updating the controller driver with an old driver of mine, but something went seriously wrong, and I lost the CD and DVD => new installation
- Same as before => new installation
- Same as before, but I installed firewall, AV and modem first. Then I went to my friend driveragent.com where, surely enough it found a problem with the harddisk controller driver. I downloaded the one they suggested, and after installing it the computer has been running smoothly.
Conclusion: I'm not too impressed with the Windows installation, especially that it installed a wrong or mis-fitting driver for my hd controller without noticing. The device manager didn't show any problems, and it was only due to my (excellent) memory of another old computer and driveragent that I actually managed to get a smoothly running Window installation from a SP2 installation disc. That is in my opinion quite bad, because the normal user probably would have had to live with a freezing computer or get in expensive expert help!
I can't wait to do the Linux Challenge to see how that goes…
