As far as what else ive read above my last reply.
If there are problems with my pc, cpu, memory, etc, etc. Why is it that windows 2003 server runs crazy fast anyway? If there were issues with the computer itself, everything would run slow always and forever.
Windows 2000 was almost as fast, but since drive C exploded, I decided to upgrade to something faster. 2k3 was even noticably faster when I ran it for fun on vmware years ago.
XP seemed around 1/2 the speed (more or less) than win2k was, even when I ran it virtually.
It got a little worse when I installed it for real. Locking up for 10 of seconds at a time, just doing simple things within windows with no other software running at all. I disabled the silly things like indexing, and every other service I found useless. Changed the settings for TCP/IP in the registry, all that made no difference.
Imo, 2003 server is just simply better and faster than XP ever has been.

I havent even got around to messing around with the services win2k3 is running, had too many other things to do to make it work decently (bypassing people who want money to install their holy free software and such). Still it does its thing reliably and in the blink of an eye.
No lag at all. If I delete thousands of files, they are gone, instantly. XP would go huh?
Then take awhile, like win98 used to. lol
When I open the green big disk and browse then close it, under win2k3, it closes, no other strange things happen. XP kinda freaks a little. Desktiop icons get refreshed, I guess, showing as blank generic ones. Takes a few seconds for them to update.
Win2k or 2k3, the desktop icons are there and updated instantly.
Me thinks XP is still kinda odd.
