I think it's both human and computer malfunction. As everyone said both W2k and XP r good. If you do choose XP, do yourself a favor and customize before using, take out the childish look all those funky colors that slow you down, might wanna rethink the auto update and the system restore, in most cases built in firewall is disabled...advice: Keep it that way. As for stability if on first install it's shitty try again..usually on second install it works very good i know sounds crazy but guess what, its true...true for me and many others. Weird aint it. Win2k adv server never tried but heard lotsa good things about it. Have fun