[Bob Crabtree]

A mate brought round to me his heavily infested Compaq Presario 2100 notebook PC, running XP Home.

Just for the record, as is the way of things - and contrary to what it says up top of the PC's keyboard - this actually turned out to be a 2143EA/DM963A.

After picking out most of the nasties, I installed Kaspersky Internet Security Suite but couldn't get KIS working fully (a first for me) - despite my having previously run uninstallers for McAfee and Norton.

Firewall was among the things not working in Kaspersky.

So I uninstalled Kaspersky (and then ran the uninstaller supplied by the maker) and installed AVG Pro (my mate has a three-PC license).

But then I ended up in a situation where the wireless wasn't properly installed (Windows kept on trying to re-install it).

I tried to uninstall the software for the built-in wireless card, to no avail, so I disabled the hardware and installed a ZyXEL CardBus wireless card. Trouble is, Windows had the same failed-recognition problem with that.

Oh, and the touchpad hadn't been working - and still wasn't after a re-install of its drivers - and then the mouse stopped working in normal mode and safe mode, whether connected by PS2 or USB).

I tried all the tricks - rolling back drivers (not allowed in this case) and a whole bunch more stuff besides, and had pretty much drawn a blank.

So, in a kill-or-cure attempt, I installed Service Pack 3 (SP3) for XP.

To my amazement, instead of this requiring me to offer profuse apologies, remove SP3 and do a repair-install, SP3 sorted out EVERYTHING - the built-in wireless, the touchpad (which had not be working at the outset - or a long while, in fact) AND the mouse!

I'm not suggesting SP3 as a cure-all but, in my particular case - and it was a situation that had left me comprehensively stumped (and that's really not very common) - it worked a minor miracle.

So, hurray for SP3!

Bob C