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.
How about this then? The article references a Dell Inspiron 530s. The Dell specs state that it comes with the Intel 82557-based 10/100 network chip.
I pulled the HCL from the Knoppix CD I have from 2002. Guess what? The 82557 chip is fully supported. Intel Ethernet chips are industry standard.
You can whine and complain and spin all you want but facts are facts.
It IS an industry standard chip. And Windows XP took tweaking to get it to recognize on of the most widely used network adapters ever made.