Ken Blake wrote:

On Sun, 08 Sep 2013 09:03:41 -0500, wrote:

I'm seriously considering dumping Win 8 from a new computer
and installing either XP Pro or Win 7 very possibly the former--
and keep it on 'til the updates stop nest year and then, if I live
that long, upgrading to Win 7.
Yeah ---laugh all you want -- but, to my actual question:


I won't laugh, but you'd be making a bad mistake, as far as I'm
concerned.

My understand is that I install the OS then install the drivers
(right?). So, that's fine --if I have the drivers on a disk.
But, suppose I download the drivers ahead of installing the OS --
how then do I get them on the machine?


Copy them to a CD, DVD, thumb drive, etc., then install them from that
after installing the operating system.

I agree with the above. The reason being that the drivers won't or
are not available for modern hardware using winxp. I could be wrong
see link below.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/w...d-support-help

I also had a winxp compatible motherboard and if I tried to run modern
software on it using winxp. It did not perform very well. So I installed
win7 on it. And it was a vast improvement over winXP. Main area was
internet use.

If you want to go back to winxp the safest
way is to use virtualbox. As I think in your thread you started
about 'confusion' some did recommend you try virtualbox.

Owe and about your computer icon. If you look at the taskbar in the win8
desktop you should see a icon to the left that looks like a folder with a
half blue square in the bottom middle of it. left click on it and you will
see that it functions the same way the 'my computer' icon does in winxp.