Five hours? I wish

So, we bought Windows XP to install on our computer. Very recently we also bought a new yet-to-be-installed hard disk, and so we thought that the sensible thing to do would be to swap the hard disks round and have the new, blank one be the primary disk, all ready for a clean install. Data from the other one could then be copied across once everything was set up properly.

The system was installed almost seamlessly - rather than thinking of fiddling with the BIOS so that it would boot from the CD, we for some reason decided to boot into DOS, find that XP setup cannot be run from DOS, install Windows Me and then install XP from within Me. Ahem. Anyway, it's mostly set up now, and we have slight, bare bones, functionality. No drivers as yet on top of the default - I believe the procedure went something like the following:

1. Boot into XP - whoo, multiple users. Novelty.
2. Open Internet Explorer.
3. Instinctively look for the Google search bar, of which there are none. Bah.
4. Open www.google.co.uk, search "firebird"
5. Yay, Firebird 0.7 (I never got around to upgrading my copy of FB since 0.6 which I downloaded in May or June). Install.
6. Open Firebird, Ctrl+K for the Google search bar, "firebird extensions"
7. Wow, many more extensions than when I last looked. Ten minutes looking through and exclaiming over new ones - there's now an extension that gives you the option in the right-click context menu of "View this page in Internet Explorer", and another one that allows you to edit the CSS of a page live (changes take place immediately - extremely useful for fiddling) - and installing all the relevant ones.
8. Find that there's something screwy with the Mouse Gestures extension whereby (a) default settings don't set any gestures; you have to set them manually, and (b) once you've set the mappings you want - or mapping, singular, since I only use one of them - and try to click OK, it won't click. You're forced to press Cancel instead. Result: I am now forced to open new tabs in the way that ordinary people have to. Make mental note to try reinstalling.
9. Google "mIRC".
10. Download. Connect. Whoo, we have chatting :-)
11. Ooh, yes, remember something very important. iTunes. Please note, I wish to emphatically deny that I bought Windows XP just so that I could install iTunes for Windows, which doesn't run on Windows Me.
12. Realise the slight flaw is that there's no music at all on the current hard disk, and the old one is still completely disconnected. Gah. Currently we have music by plugging my iPod directly into the speakers.
13. [Next day:] Google "Eudora". Download Eudora version 6 (6? I was still on version 5 - I really must check the programs that I run for newer releases).
14. The Eudora installation asks for Disk 1, and refuses to budge.
15. Poke around Eudora's website, find the "alternative download" which is a .zip file. Okay, that works.
16. Download. Extract. eudora.exe.
17. Version 5 again?
18. Set up suespammers.org account for receiving emails - all my other email accounts come through there until I get round to sorting this out.
19. New mail account. Display name: Cathy Young.
20. Email address: cyoung85@suespammers.org
21. Incoming server: um, pretty sure it's mail.suespammers.org. No need to check.
22. Login name: Um... was it just cyoung85? Ah, no, I can vaguely remember that it's something funny. Check at www.suespammers.org (which is actually www.spamcon.org.
23. Click through to Mailboxes, unfiltered, since I know there are instructions there for setting up your email account in an email client.
24. "SpamCon Foundation has temporarily stopped providing suespammers.org email addresses." Okay, fair enough. Instructions for old users who have mislaid their login information? Doesn't tell you. Anywhere.
25. Damn.
26. Ten or fifteen minutes of slightly panicky experimentation follow, after which I eventually hit upon the combination that works, namely cyoung85_suespammers.org. Whoohoo. We have incoming mail.
27. Set up outgoing email, I can remember details for that.
28. Hmm. Where does my @bentbacktulips.co.uk email go to? (I have set it all up, though I don't use it - by the time I had my own domain I thought I'd confuse people if I suddenly changed email addresses again.) Can't remember. Decide to send email to cathy@bentbacktulips.co.uk to check.
29. Turn off the damn US spelling checker. Leave the chili peppers, though, it's always fun when your software disapproves of you.
30. Wait...
31. Ah, received, goody. Must be suespammers as well.
32. Make mental note that I'm relying far too much on suespammers.org email.
33. Attempt to do cursory browsing and realise just how much you rely on Firebird's autocomplete. And bookmarks! My bookmarks have all vanished! (At this point the old hard drive is connected as the primary slave drive, and is recognised by the BIOS but not by Windows XP. Gah.)
34. Now, where are we... oh yes, blogs, the addiction. Thank goodness for Bloglines, online RSS aggregator.
35. Read a few, then realise that you should be blogging this.
36. Start writing your blog entry, and by the time you get down to here realise that you are quite seriously flawed to feel that you should definitely be blogging this. Although in my favour, I got through quite a lot of the installation process before this thought occurred.

So that's where we are at the moment - barely any programs (just the important ones you understand - browser, email, IRC client) and wondering if there's anything else we should have done before making the switch.

Is it terribly dismissive to say, "I'm sure we'll find out"?