hello, and thank you for getting back...
I tried to disable as much as I could and only ended up with :
-no mouse, no Internet, no sign of the 'Multimedia Audio Controller'.
the hardware wizard couldn't find anything that wasn't installed and so could not make use of the cd-rom installation. After enabling all again the hardware wizard stops at the same point as it did in the original XP installation with the error message stating:

'Cannot install this hardware
There was aproblem installing this hardware:
Multimedia Audio Controller

An error occurred during the installation of the device......the data is invalid'

the pc is home grown and using v1 of the K7s5a. all has been running flawlessly since it was originally built in Nov/01

no it is not slipstreamed
phew.......I hope that helps....
bye for now