Member Panel

There is simply no way to select a set of "generic" drivers.

Even the "generic" drivers are selected from a pool of "generic" ones when XP does an install or even a Repair Install. For instance, there are many versions of HAL.DLL that XP Install has to choose from to pick the correct one for a particular motherboard hardware. The installer runs a very lengthy hardware "discovery" algorithm to find out exactly which "generic" drivers and files to use.

In the days of Windows 98, you used to be able to have multiple hardware profiles...this was handy, as a new computer would detect -but you'd still have to install the drivers.
Was good for avoiding conflicts...they stopped doing this for licensing problems (I believe).

Vista comes with a lot of drivers for many different hardware, which would be considered "generic" but XP is now 6 years old...a lot of the hardware that was out back then is now completely obsolete.