Oh christ, all this anti-Win/XP "evil-empire" crap. Hey, have any of you ever used Windows Update? For your information its quite capable of checking a recording every little detail about what is on your system.Let that massage your paranoia. And yet, MS only uses it to check if you need to update. As far as XP stability, you asking too much if you expect XP to run fine on a system that came with Win98/SE on it hence the problems. Sure it could work fine. But not on all systems originally containing Win988. Someone actually missed Win95? Win98 is indeed very much improved. At last check The lates service release of XP greatly improves it. I have yet to read major bad stuff about it. As far as the pain full "new code required" thing. Yeah that sucks. But rather than be pissed at MS why don't you direct your irritation where it belongs. THe piracy groups and thier downloaders. PeteJ