My experiences with XP are mixed. Normally I have no problems whatsoever. However I have encountered one AMD Athlon powered machine from Time which is guaranteed to have a fit any time any new USB device is attached and sometimes throws a fit when new software (eg open office) are installed. One item ( USB wireless network device) which I have had working fine on several other machines refused point blank to install properly. its difficult to know if its a hardware fault or incompabilities between various chipsets.
USB to (any kind of) networking is a bad solution at best... especially if your USB/NIC are USB 1.1 compatible... you WILL experience at best hiccups or temporary lock-ups and that's not the machine's fault (nor Windows' impressively :-)
Several years ago I had similar problems to those described on a PII running 98, and found myself re-installing every few weeks. eventually I discovered that reducing bus speed etc to the minimum supported by the mobo, all the problems disappeared. I sent it back, and after 12 weeks diagnostics !? the supplier had to admit that it was a hardware fault on the Mobo. I think that the design of the board was marginal on RFI, and I was unlucky; the noise when under heavy load was sufficient to get the occasional data corruption.
Sounds more like memory failure (Most of the early memory wouldn't work properly at marginal speeds).. except if it were a Asustek (Asus). Some of their PII mainboards although pricey were notoriously misdesigned
Phoebus
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