How stable is Windows XP?
We were very skeptical when we first loaded Windows XP Professional on our lab PC’s, but for the most part, we’ve been happy with the new Operating System. Our “clean” installations of XP Pro on a variety of desktops and laptops went smoothly and have been very stable. We did run across a few upgrade issues as well as unexplained lockups on a single test system (a Dell Latitude C600), which turned out to be a faulty memory module. That said, we get a lot of hostile e-mail from users who are having nothing but problems with XP Home Edition and Professional. After a bit of investigating, most of their issues seem to be preventable (user inflicted) causes and not inherent instabilities with XP. I’m not saying XP is perfect – it does have it’s share of bugs. But you can improve XP’s (or any Microsoft operating systems reliability by following these guidelines: • Only use hardware that is on the Hardware Compatibility List -. This ensures that the products and drivers went through rigorous
