Logan ,
to answer your fisrt question what did you do - when resizing the PAGEFILE then Win2k will use more Memory than the Pagefile - this is a file written to your disk - as usual Memory is a lot faster and with 512 Mb there is no need to have a big Page file ...Look here - I had the Page file locked to 128 Mb MAX, and using only 192Mb RAM - so all it does it writes less to your disk..
Look
Here about memory and PAGEFILE
To remove the Winzip from the Systemtray - do this..
START > RUN >type REGEDIT find this string and then in the run command on the right side you can delete the entry for Winzip below the Key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run or you can download this tiny program and this will make it possible to remove Winzip from start to SYSTEM TRAY wwith the click on the mouse button
You can Download this one
Here and then Download REGCLEANER - But be somewhat carefull when using it - this instead of manually editing the REGISTRY - and you always have a backup option in there.. to get removed entries back again with a click on the mouse
As for the chopped sound of your Soundcard - first find out what KIND of SOUND MODULE you have AC98 is only a exstension of the Actula sound card - so you have to find in Control Panel >SYSTEM >HARDWARE > DEVICE MANAGER click SOUND ,VIDEO and Game Controllers nad look at he make - then install any drive which isn't WDM this will help it --
FOOT NOTE :
I dont' think that is because of Winzip that it still starts slow but rather you should download Diskeeper 7.0 from
www.diskeeper.com and install it - this then run boot time defragment and you will see the improvement..
As for the firewal use
www.zonalarm.com and get the Pro version 2.63 - works great under Win2k
Sorry for the long reply..