It's been so long since I last reformatted this rig that I can't remember when last I did so.
Years ago, I started having weird device issues. Starting with Forceware 275.33, I got black fields in various windows. Printers stopped working. Networked hard drives stopped working. Device Manager itself stopped working. I put up with a lot of crap.
So I'm reformatting the C: drive and reinstalling XP.
I'm on my second attempt today. After installing Forceware 197.45, I got a slew of error messages at reboot. Missing DLLs and other such things. I tried a restore, but that didn't seem to wipe out the device driver.
I seem to recall certain video drivers requiring Service Pack 2 for installation. Does that sound right?
What I do not want to happen is for XP to automatically update the device driver to the latest and greatest, and end up with black windows again. What a pain that was.
I seem to recall problems with certain drivers and SLI popup warnings. Western Digital has drives with hidden feature sets that XP doesn't know what to make of. There are probably hundreds of little problems I used to understand that are going to crop up all over again.
Anyway, I'm thinking I can start with Forceware 81.94 and go from there.