[Clive Long]

Hello,

A cousin (of mine) has a really flaky Windows ME box - it hangs , i.e. does not respond to keyboard or mouse, but still displays the "active" windows. One has to power down the PC to recover. There is no pattern nor obvious "triggers" to the hang

The PC has got 1.1Ghz proc and 128MB RAM

He wants to keep it for his kids to run games.

Flakiness may be due to Viruses (Norton Anti-Virus expired long, long ago) or Win ME (heard bad stories about this) or falky hardware (how would one know?)

I have run a Microsoft memory diagnostic for a while and that runs clean

So we are thinking about upgrading to Win XP Home.

Will XP Home run OK in 128Mb or should we put in another 128Mb?

Is this upgrade OK or should we nuke the disk and start with a clean install of XP Home?

Amazon want 95 squiddlies for this upgrade software - that's tantamount to theft in my book.

There seem to be lots of sellers of XP Home media and licences on EBay wanting around £25 to £40 - but I can't see how that can work out because I guess MSoft has a strangle-hold on the retail price of all its software. So how can these sellers source valid media and licence keys for that money?

Any ideas on other options to perform this upgrade?

Thanks

Clive