GRRRRR! Not support XP!

What the heck kind of garbage is that?
I emailed mindstorms.com asking them for help with my USB tower problem, and all they can tell me is that "The product was not designed nor developed for the Windows XP operating system, and is not supported in Windows XP. We cannot guarantee the functionality of the program in that OS. There are no updates available for the program for XP. "
That's it! No further suggestions, no nothing.
Some of you MUST be using mindstorm with winXP! How the heck did you set it up?

No problems here (no special steps to do anything except get vision command running). XP does have win98, and win95 compatability mode. Just right click the icon then hit properties. Its somewhere in there.
  Quoted Text Here  
and
for
no
it

I thought mindstorms.lego.com had an XP patch?
Oh, and I heard somewhere that you can use cygwin32 + other tools to control the IR tower by emulating linux ...
but yeah, saying no to Windows XP support is just boneheadedly stupid on their part ...

  Quoted Text Here  
It can be done. The subject came up several times in this newsgroup so i suggest you use a search engine like google and search this newsgroup. And also look at the Lego website and search for a XP patch to prevent an annoying startup problem.
MSX & X10 & 6502 & Philips bouwdozen & sales: http://members.chello.nl/h.otten

An XP patch is at the front page of mindstorms web: http://mindstorms.lego.com/eng/default.asp
I have heard of a problem with USB tower and PC's with hyper threating (virtual dual processors). The patch does not solve this issue. It may help to disable hyper threating in PC BIOS. Otherwise, get a serial tower from www.bricklink.com or www.pitsco.com Of course, Lego ought to get this act together! There is also problems with XP and Lego Studios. Stupid.
- Thomas Hoeg-Jensen
  Quoted Text Here  
and
for
no
it

This probably won't help, but you might want to try the RoboLAB software (get it from Lego DACTA). I got a RoboLAB kit for my kids for Christmas and we have had no real problems with the tower and USB under XP. There is a bug in the walk-throughs that requires you to move some files, but it is documented on the LEGO website.
RoboLAB is a software package for LEGO designed to teach school aged children robotics. It requires more up-front work than Mindstorms, but is far more powerful. Good luck.