But without at least sp1 you'll get infected very soon if you're connected to the web.
I've done this several times and have never had that happen. The first thing to do after the install is make sure all of your drivers loaded. The very next thing is connect to the internet, go to windows update and get all of the updates that are available. Service pack two is usually one of the first updates that you get. You have to keep restarting and going back to Microsoft update until it stops finding updates for your computer. After that, install the antivirus of your choice and you should be good to go.
If you want to create a slipsteam disk, go ahead. I've never had problems with slipstream disks.
As for your drivers, you may get lucky and the XP disk will recognize all of your hardware and load drivers during the install. I've had luck with this several times. As I mentioned above, the very first thing to do after you have installed XP is check device manager. Click Start then Run and type in:
devmgmt.msc and press enter. If you see any yellow exclamation marks you will need a driver for that device.
When you bought your computer it should have came with a few Cd's. One of these will be your drivers CD. It might say something like "drivers and utilities" on it. That will have all of the drivers for your computer on it.
If you don't have a drivers CD, don't worry. Your computer manufacturer's website should have all of your drivers available for download. If you do have to download drivers, use a different computer to get them and save them to a CD. Remember, the very first thing you want to do after you have connected to the internet, is go to Microsoft Update and get all of the updates that are available for your machine (even if you use the slipstream disk).
