I apologize if this is the wrong place for such a question, but I am restoring an old Windows XP laptop to program my radios in Chirp and the official BaoFeng programming software. The original laptop (2002 Toshiba Satellite) with XP came with no service packs installed. Do I need to install all 3 service packs for the Prolific programming cable (I'm using the XP driver for the prolific cable) to work with Chirp? I tried it with no service packs and Chirp didn't work, it kept telling me to reinstall Chirp but that didn't fix it. The BaoFeng official software seemed to work, I just read from the radio, but did not try writing back to the radio. Right now I have Service Pack 2 installed and I'm gonna give it a try. The laptop is so old that Windows XP Service Pack 3 really slows down the computer drastically. The laptop doesn't have much memory or a very big hard drive. XP with no service packs runs real fast, but slows down more and more as I install the service packs. I'm going to try it with service pack 2 installed.
I do not have it connected to the internet so I'm not worried about automatic Windows Driver updates to mess up the Prolific cable. I'm just curious if anyone else has tried the same thing. I've got the FTDI cable on Win10 on my home computer but there's times I want to experiment using the laptop so I can free up my home computer.
Thanks,Dan Jolley