OS reinstallation

I have a Dell 3000 that I want to reinstall the OS. Does Microsoft provide support for xp, so i can download all the security and driver updates. Any other problems you guys anticipate with doing this?

Thanks

 

maybe too little memory to run smoothly

 

From the Dell 3000 specs it will take up to 2GB. 1-2GB should run XP fine. 1GB is all I have in my 1.83GHz XP laptop and it's pretty snappy, but I have a lean machine with typically only about 27 processes running and 550-650MB of RAM available. If you're going to load it up with a lot of memory-resident programs, it will like 2GB better. SP3 purportedly requires more memory than earlier SPs, but I didn't notice any difference between SP2 and SP3.

M'soft just a month or so ago stopped support for XP for anything earlier than SP3, so after you reinstall the OS, update it to SP1, then SP2, and then SP3 if you want to be safe. I'm not sure you can go straight from an OE install directly to SP3, but you could research it. I wouldn't chance it myself. M'soft's site should list the requirements for installing SP2 and SP3. You'll need SP3 in order to continue to receive Security Updates. I think I read that M'soft is going to support SP3 for four more years, but I could be wrong about that....pretty certain that it's for at least 2 more years, though.

 

tried to edit previous post, but time ran out...From M'soft's site you apparently can install SP3 with a minimum pre-requisite of SP1a, so update to SP1a, then to SP3 and you should be all set.

 

Thanks to everyone for the valuable info.