Backing up Windows XP!!!!!!

[mikeymike]

Oh, how life is so much easier with one partition for just Windows, and another for apps and data.

[mikeymike]

Under no circumstances enable Automatic Updates

Agreed.  Disable the Background Intelligent Transfer Service also.

and make sure you format and re-install every 9 - 12 months

Hmm, that depends on how you use your computer.  My parents' machine (NT4) is as responsive/fast as the day I finished installing it.  On the flipside, my machine's Win2k install lasts a few months max as I'm always screwing around with Windows :-)

twice now I have seen entire partitions wiped out after a Service Pack upgrade,

I've never seen or heard of that problem before...

[mikeymike]

Hmm... Never applied NT4 SP2

Nope, I first touched NTx just after SP3 was released :-)

My main problem with MS service packs nowadays is how they re-enable stuff I've disabled, make IE icons re-appear on the desktop, things like that.

[mikeymike]

@ DoomMaster's "Windows XP is the anti-christ" posts

Hmm, I think you'll need to back up your claims about services blocking WinXP.  According to the stats for my website, WinXP is the most popular OS in use nowadays.  I seriously doubt services will block it.

IMO there are a few sucky things about WinXP, so I stick with Win2k (not really out of choice, new mobo didn't support NT4), but nothing seriously bad.  Service packs and WinXP don't seem to agree far more often nowadays, and I don't like Windows Product Activation, nor IM being part of the OS.

[mikeymike]

re: WinXP licensing issues

If you've bought a legal license to use an OS, who cares how you install it, is my take on it.  I wouldn't pay full attention to MS's take on things, as they believe that an OS is permanently tied to the hardware it was originally installed on, that you can't move a license from one machine to another, and allsorts of crazy things.

[mikeymike]

I think this oddity of MS licensing is Win2k and later - there are retail license keys and OEM license keys, you need to use the respective install media otherwise the key won't work.

There are also differences between the retail and OEM versions sometimes, like SMB connections are limited to 10 concurrent with Win2k Server OEM without doing a few workarounds which (IIRC) break the license agreement :-)

[mikeymike]

By far the most irritating thing about services getting re-enabled on Windows without informing the user, is I find my IIS setup has been re-enabled when I specifically didn't want it to, so I have to set it to disabled (rather than manual), and so I get errors in the event log telling me I've been a naughty boy because I've disabled a service that Windows would really like to start.