[Knitebane]

Again that’s BS. It DID work, it just needed some additional drivers, which shipped with the computer. It’s not an indication of anything. IT’S A SEVEN YEAR OLD OPERATING SYSTEM, IT HAS ZERO BEARING ON TODAY. You and the author need to get that through your heads.

It's the most commonly used Windows OS. It failed to recognize industry standard Ethernet.

XP DOES have generic drivers for things like network adapters.

Obviously not, since his didn't work.

XP’s generic driver DO work with many devices even today.

Except for his Ethernet card.

here have ALWAYS been devices that didn’t work with the generic drivers in XP and other OSes for a variety of reasons.

No, just one reason. Microsoft.

As an OS gets older that list of things that don’t work with the generic drivers tends to get longer, it’s a natural part of OS aging.

Only under two circumstances.

One is on completely new types of hardware. If his SATA controller hadn't worked, well that would be understandable. SATA didn't even exist when XP came out.

Second, poor coding. An OS should recognize standardized hardware. It doesn't have to fully support it, but it should run in some kind of minimal function.

If it doesn't, the OS is poorly coded.

[boogerbear]

Why do you assume it’s an industry standard ethernet? Why do you assume it complies with 2001 industry standards? You’re making lots and lots of claims and they’re not even slightly backed up by the information provided.

Sorry one adapter that might or might not be up to standards doesn’t prove XP’s generic drivers don’t work. As another poster pointed out, they worked with his adapter. So now we’re 50/50 with specific adapters.

No sorry, many reasons. I know it hurts your religious belief to recognize that there are companies out there not named MS that do stupid things, but that’s the truth. And actually Intel is high on the list of companies that likes to violate standards.

There you go with your assumptions again. You assume and assume and assume and not even one of you assumptions are slightly backed up. Plenty of new versions of old hardware screw up their PnP announcements which causes the OS to not be able to know what type of device it is. And when the hardware isn’t doing its part of the PnP process right that’s not MS’s fault. Now matter how much you hate them, other companies screw up too.