XP Performance Improvement (also helps Vista)

I've found that in addition to the tips listed for improving performance, that shutting off the file indexing feature helps considerably.

Especially on systems that have slow hard drives to begin with.

You can do this by going to my computer, right click your mouse on drive c: go to properties and uncheck the box that says allow indexing service to index this drive.

It may give you an error message but tell it to ignore all and continue.

You'll see an improvement for the majority of users.