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Surprise, surprise: Windows XP doesn't walk on water. Despite the biggest beta test program ever and claims that Windows XP would be the best Windows to date, the much-heralded new operating system turns out to be merely very good, rather than miraculous. Instead of universally smooth upgrades and broad compatibility, some upgraders are getting nailed by misidentified hardware, unexplained reboots and crashes, and hardware and software vendors who've been slow to support the new OS--snafus that also plagued Windows Me and Windows 2000 upgrades.

It's the Devices, Microsoft

That's not to say everybody is experiencing problems. Roughly half of several hundred PCWorld.com users responding to an informal survey reported positive upgrade experiences. The other half fared worse, and many eventually removed the OS from their PCs. Though the survey results are far from scientific, they do suggest that upgrading to Windows XP is nothing to undertake lightly.

On the day that XP debuted, Microsoft had already released megabytes of software compatibility updates and bug corrections (see XP's Gotchas for a report on XP software compatibility updates from Microsoft and other vendors). Since then, the company has fixed additional bugs, including a serious security flaw (for details, see Bugs and Fixes), and two less-critical but irritating glitches that botched file searches and sent XP's clock drifting out of sync with Internet time servers. Microsoft is already working on Windows XP Service Pack 1, which the company says will appear by summer and include support for USB 2.0 devices.

A flurry of bugs and bug fixes isn't exactly unusual with a new software release, and XP users who visit the Windows Update Web site and download the critical updates should be largely unaffected by XP's debut jitters. And almost every surveyed reader who registered a comment on the dreaded Windows Product Activation process deemed it "painless," and "no big deal." Yet few readers were prepared for the sheer volume of printers, scanners, modems, and other devices that XP failed to support.

Boulder, Colorado, private investor Su Sayre didn't even have to install an XP upgrade to run into trouble with the OS. She bought a new Dell Inspiron 8100 in early November with Windows XP preinstalled. But problems with the notebook's NVidia display controller, plus trouble connecting to Sayre's Palm V handheld, persuaded her to ship the system back to Dell within two days despite hours spent on the phone with Dell tech support. "Given the time I was on hold, I conclude that I wasn't the only person arranging a return and that many of us out here cherish our old, dependable Windows 9x systems," she declares.

Part of the problem is that Windows XP, like Windows 2000 and Windows NT before it, is incompatible with drivers written for Windows 9x versions. Since Windows 2000 debuted two years ago, many manufacturers have made the switch to the new driver model, increasing the chances that your peripherals will work with XP. Some continue to lag behind or have decided--much to their customers' dismay--not to invest the considerable resources needed to write drivers for older and discontinued devices (see the table for those that cropped up in our survey results). In some cases, even Windows 2000 drivers won't work in Windows XP because of changes in the operating system's architecture.

To bridge the compatibility gap, Microsoft has supplied makeshift drivers in Windows XP that provide basic functionality for printers, scanners, and other peripherals but lack support for the advanced features the devices may have, such as double-sided or high-resolution print modes, or faxing and scanning in multifunction units. Upgraders learn of the degraded functionality only after the XP installation is complete.

Brent Lawrence, an assistant church pastor in Skokie, Illinois, found that the driver included in Windows XP for his NEC 1260 laser printer (which he purchased less than three years ago) supported only 300-dpi output. Before upgrading his system to Windows XP, Lawrence had been able to print at 600 dpi under Windows 98. When he pursued NEC for a driver update, the company informed him that as a result of "limited resources" it would not be producing a fully functional Windows XP driver for the printer. Lawrence blames both Microsoft and NEC. "If [Microsoft] had time to include a driver that supported [the printer] partially, why not take a little extra time to squeeze out the full resolution? As for NEC, it has lost any of my future business," he says.

Lawrence wound up reluctantly reverting his PC to Windows 98. But many other upgraders are unwilling to return to their previous operating system--especially if it's the unpopular Windows Me.

Jeff Sandler, senior product manager for printers at Brother Industries, says the delay in producing updated drivers for Windows XP has been unavoidable because of demands on both the manufacturer and Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs, which certifies the drivers. "When the world changes, think of the thousands and thousands of products that have to get updated. The sheer volume of testing that has to happen has been the bottleneck," Sandler asserts. Like many other hardware makers, Brother promises to post XP drivers for most of its products early this year.

Lack of support for a crucial device was the most common reason our survey respondents gave for backing out of an XP upgrade. But a surprising number said they were willing to replace incompatible hardware, often at a cost of hundreds of dollars, in exchange for XP's stability.

But rather than switching hardware, Microsoft Windows XP product manager Mark Croft says, XP users should complain loudly to manufacturers. This strategy has a proven track record: Hewlett-Packard initially balked at producing Windows 2000 drivers, but finally did so in response to numerous and bitter customer complaints.

"The more grassroots pressure [vendors] get, the more likely that they'll turn around on this," Croft says.

Clean Installs Still Best

Adding to the confusion around Windows XP's hardware support, many upgraders say that despite the Upgrade Advisor's warnings that a particular device would be incompatible, it ended up working after all. That was particularly true of scanners and software-based modems. Worse, XP carries on Windows' traditional difficulty with properly discovering installed hardware during upgrades. Readers reported that upgrades failed to identify devices that Microsoft's Upgrade Advisor ruled compatible, but subsequent from-scratch installs on the same system yielded better results.

After determining that his home computer met Windows XP's minimum system requirements, information systems manager John Klim of Huntington, West Virginia, launched into his XP upgrade without a second thought. "In hindsight, not the best move," Klim acknowledges. The installation seemed to go well, but it resulted in an unusable system--no Internet connection, no e-mail, applications missing, and only a generic video driver. After a week spent recovering from the disaster, Klim resorted to the power-user's favorite installation trick--the clean install. "This time it worked like a dream," Klim says, and declares XP the best version of Windows yet.

Windows XP product manager Kristian Gyorkos says generic drivers may sometimes work unexpectedly with a particular device. As for clean installs that identify hardware that an upgrade doesn't, Gyorkos says quirks in the previous installation of Windows could be the culprit. He insists that XP's device-discovery capabilities are the best ever in a Windows OS.

It Can Crash!

But while most survey respondents agree with Microsoft that XP is the most stable Windows yet, it's clearly not crashproof. Numerous survey respondents (and this author) have encountered spontaneous reboots on otherwise stable systems, even after a clean install--a problem that appears to be linked to incompatible device drivers and to third-party firewall software. Instead of locking up at the blue screen of death--the default crash scenario in Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000--Windows XP simply reboots the computer. After the reboot, XP asks your permission to upload a trouble report to Microsoft with system-state information at the time of the crash.

Microsoft's Croft says these crash reports give the company an unprecedented ability to track and iron out Windows XP's bugs. Until those bugs are squashed, if you are interested in Windows XP's clear benefits, proceed with caution. Since the only way to know exactly how well XP will support your system is to install and use it, consider dual-booting XP with your current operating system--at least until you're prepared to let your unsupported hardware go.

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