running XP Pro here... with no probs whatsoever.. turned off all the dial home stuff (plenty of websites on how to do that).. Stable as a rock unless I do something stupid (like uninstall ZoneAlarm while in safe mode.. long story but it had to do with M$Blast), almost everything runs on it (some things won't - eg Mechwarrior 2 and family - they have a built in coding not to run on anything NT Based), the only hardware I can't get to run at it's full potential is my joystick setup.. (F-15 TALON 48 function Joystick + a SFS Split 64function throttle) .. and thats not XP's fault.. the makers Suncom have gone into the great unknown
on the whole.. XP Pro is the best OS I've used from M$ in a long long long time...
(I've used all flavours of Dos, Windows 1,2,3,3.1,3.11,95,95sr2,95sr3,98,98se,2K Pro,XP Pro)
oh a Prox? a program going down on NT/2K.XP 9 times out of 10 will not bring the system down.. cos of the way that they handle programs.. each program ends up running in it's own 'virtual machine' - so if it goes boom it only takes out that.. not the whole system.. should have been in Windows years ago!