Snowtrooper, my semi-intrepid Dell keeled over from a bad case of USB drivers the other night, forcing me to repair the WinXP from the master CD. On the upside, running a fully legitimate rig meant having a recovery disc.

The downside was on the reboot, and the discovery that WinXP wouldn’t update. The reason? Microsoft broke Windows XP with a stealth update patch. They’ve introduced a fix for it, but the matter remains the same - Microsoft broke their own software toys

Judging by the dates of the articles, it appears that Microsoft trashed XP around the time it realised that Windows Vista was just not making inroads into the marketplace.  Colour me cynical, but what logical thought process develops in head of a person who thinks making their current product work badly encourages people to buy the newest version?