[Knitebane]

There you go again assuming the hardware is identical to the function. Ethernet is a known quantity, Dell’s specific implementation of ethernet is NOT.

Fair enough. I will point out again that the virtual test was IN ADDITION TO the real OS on real hardware problems that were seen in the article and on numerous web forums.

It is an additional data point, showing that Windows XP refuses to recognize a well documented, well understood Ethernet implementation.

To sum up:

Real Dell hardware, Intel EtherPro chip:

Current version of Linux Mint - OK
Most current version of Windows XP (SP3) - FAIL

Other, various hardware, Intel EtherPro chip:

Current versions of Linux - OK
2002 version of Linux - OK
Most current version of Windows XP (SP3) - FAIL

Virtual hardware, emulated Intel EtherPro chip:

Current versions of Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD - OK
2002 version of Linux - OK
Most current version of Windows XP (SP3) - FAIL

See the pattern?

[boogerbear]

Your “data point” and the article’s have no relationship to each other. All we’ve got from the article is that XP doesn’t have drivers for some newer hardware, something I never disputed, the only part I dispute is the author and you using newer Linuxes than XP and thinking it has any meaning.

Then we have you putting stuff on virtual machines and not getting hardware detected. Completely unrelated concepts, lends nothing to the original discussion.