I agree very strongly to useing a full "clean installe"version of XP.The upgrades can and do cause problems for many people. But think about this...for a little bit more than the cost of buying XP,you can purchase a new tower with XP already installed. Not talking about a high end "gamer"state of the art number...but a good solid made for XP machine. For about $225.00 more than what I would have paid for XP alone...I got XP inside of a 1.3mhz,40 gig hard drive,512mg ram,Cd burning machine(with 6 months free AOL).Photoshop,Illustrator,Painter,Poser4,Vue d'Esprit,ZBrush and Indesign all run fast,smooth and no crashes since I've had it(1 year). Don't get rid of your old machine,but network the two of them togeather...you can be rendering on one machine,and doing other things on the other(like posting your images I like to look at). Think you'll be better off in the long run. SWAMP