Another thing I found very helpful was having a high speed internet connection (Wired) to connect to during the install of XP. I bought my oem copy through Amazon. I think it cost about 89 dollars. You might do better on ebay. I researched by doing google searches and had most of the needed drivers before I started the XP install. After the install there were about 80 windows updates and there were a few drivers to install. the whole process took a couple of hours. I have been using this laptop as my primary show machine for several weeks and it works great!