I fell back to 2000 from XP solely because of the activation insult. (You might remember a while back they decided they would no longer allow the automated unlocking of XP, requiring you to talk to a phone dood and answer questions to prove your innocence.)
Regarding crashes, I've never had a problem when I wasn't pushing the FSB beyond max rated (1500) on my E6600. Id est, if something went wrong, I can directly finger something known to be buggy or out of sorts.
Now, for the patch download, you never need to go through the authentication garbage. All you need is the direct URL link to the file. Like this one:
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...57-x86-ENU.exe
Just go to the "Click here to submit to honor verification" page, get the actual filename (the WindowsXP-KB~.exe part, it's plainly displayed) and throw it at Google. You're almost sure to turn up a direct URL link somewhere, even if it's hot off the presses like this one. Just be sure it's a download.microsoft.com addess and not a trap.
06-29-2007, 04:44 PM
