GTwannabe:
I'm not really sure what your particular problem was, but both McAfee and Symantec's anti-virus sofware are running fine on various WinXP machines of mine, at home and at work.
You might contact the appropriate vendors for support if you can't get it to work properly.
Of all the reasons I've seen to NOT upgrade to WinXP, this is one of the least persuasive.
Out of curiosity, what sort of "quirks and issues" have you run across in WinXP? I have not found anything I've had a problem with thus far, I'd like to see if I'm just lucky or what...
Brian K