Major Problems with XP Home

[Kitchkenet]

Help. These problems have gotten progresivly worse as time has gone by. They range from slow system boots to complete lock-ups. I have all kinds of software loading and I dont know what is usfull and what is trash. mutiple services (58) are always running. Boot time takes forever.

There are three user accounts on this machine, two have admin rights and one has user rights.

Everything is all cramed together in one FAT-32 partition.

This was a prebiult system and most of the software was perinstalled.
there is also a "hidden partition" thats holds the restore info. (see below for specs)

I wolud like to wpie the drive clean, partition it it, install XP Pro and set up partitions for each user of the computer. HDD is 120 GBs i am also plannig to add a second HDD


Recent additions are a new psu (430 watts) from a 250 watt psu, and a new video card (Nvidia fx 5200 /128DDR /tvout) I have updated to the latest drviers for the video card, and I have aplied all patches except SP2. and an anti/viurs f/w upgrade E-trust

Questions: How do I determine what services can I kill?
Would a clean install of XP Pro be my best soultion?
Partitioning the O/S away from the other software is a good idea, right?
What can i do to speed up this system, as it stands, untill I have the time to "rebuild" the installation of the software?
Thanks

[doncolt]

Heya Kitch!
Had the same problem. Actually installed another hard drive and kept c: for old data only. Four programs I swear by. AVG antivirus found 168 infected files Norton missed. (Grisoft.com). Spyware Doctor and Registry Mechanicfrom Element5.com, and switch to the Firefox browser at mozilla.org. Firefox is free and doesn't use activex controls, so your computer can't be hijacked. The others have free trials. My c: drive runs perfectly now two years later, if it hiccups I run all three. Hope this helps!

[Kitchkenet]

ok, ill give that a try. I have those progys around here somewhere.