Judith, XP is a stable OS. If you are having problems - you stated "I
don't think it every worked well" - then there is something wrong with
the hardware it's installed on or something messed up with the
installation and/or mix of programs you've installed.
The computer is one month old. It came without a modem and with the OS
in Italian. I had a brand new copy of Windows XP in English, and
couldn't alter the language on the computer, so I attempted to install
my English XP to replace the Italian one. That's probably the major
thing, because it installed it on the data disk and did not replace the
Italian XP. I would have worked with it from the data disk, but it
wouldn't accept the monitor, which is made only for the EU market XP
does not allow you to remove XP, not even an extra one. It crashed a
lot.
Then I bought and installed an external modem, the ONLY 56K one
available in my city . XP doesn't like it either. The modem
manufacturer rejects emails "for policy reasons."
I am slowly learning Italian computer terms, but there's nothing
intuitive about it. It also makes it very hard to ask questions,
because what would you answer if I asked a question about ripristino?
So, I have 2 XP versions, a modem XP hates and all in my second
language and at least 3-7 error reports to MS every day. Most have to
do with the modem, but recently also the video driver. Add to that an
ISP that drops the connection as many as 4 times during one download...
Also, many of the support sites are now a joke, and anyway once I enter
my country provide only an Italian page, which means more difficulty
yet. This is not an easy situation and I find XP difficult and touchy.