Need some help.

Thanks for the link Mark, I'll be sure to check it out. The harddrive that's in there right now is strictly gaming. It's a WD 75gb raptor. I'm fine with the RAM I have, I feel that there's no need to upgrade right now. I'm running with 2.75GB and it's flying so no real issues hardware wise.
As far as trimming down goes. I'm running XP SP3 and I have to say it's kind of a memory hog. I run Ubuntu on this same rig with a 500GB harddrive and it's significantly faster. I was wondering if there are specific tasks in task manager or some programs that I can go with out, to reduce the memory usage. I'm more for function over fashion and I just want to clean out that features that I know I'll never make use of, or rather I don't need to make use of.

Thanks for all the help,
Eddy

There are things you can do to improve startup time, if not overall performance. Your 2.75GB of RAM helps a lot, but if you have an onboard video card you could try a dedicated video card which doesn't share memory with the System RAM.

Processes and Services can be trimmed down, in some cases significantly, but you will still need some. It's the nature of the Windows beast I'm afraid. These are the three things I would look at;

1] System Startup Files.

Disable anything that attempts to load at startup which you don't really need. Things like Real Player, (my pet hate), Quicktime, any other media players, any Instant Messaging utilities, email software, browser 'quick starts'. Anything that you can simply open once Windows is loaded.

The System Configuration Editor helps there. Goto Start > Run, type in msconfig and click OK, then goto the Startup tab. Google will help you identify most entries.

2] Processes.

The manual way to do this is to use an online resource like AnswersThatWork to check through each process, and decide whether it is essential, non-essential, or just plain dangerous.

3] Services.

You can check which Services are running from the Services Console. Start > Run, type in services.msc and click OK. Double click any entry to find out more, and if necessary to disable or set to manual.

The Elder Geek's Service Guide will help you there.

That should get you started.

Mark

Thanks so much for your help. Really lay it out in black and white.

Thanks,
Eddy