[I'm unable to play .ts file]

How do you know if you need this?

If you intend to play HD video in 9x you're crazy anyway, so you most likely won't need it.

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

SpeedFan does not read C2D temps properly. Ever heard of CoreTemp or RealTemp? I want a shot of those.

And oh, you can encode x264 videos just fine... at 3 FPS. Wow, that's an amazing processor you got there man! Also Vista Experience Index scores don't really mean anything.

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

You probably had a CPU that had poor contact between the die and the IHS. Lapping or switching out the CPU won't help there.

If you read the whole paragraph, i had removed the IHS entirely, yet i was still having the same issue.

Dell's laptops are pretty good. Their desktops suck balls. Toshiba sucks in every aspect, Acer used to suck hard now they semi-suck, Lenovo isn't what IBM used to be, and that's about it.

Benchmarks... Bah. All Core chips score high numbers. But no benchmark is able to measure the "feel" of the system. For the end-user that only does basic tasks with their computer, that's what matters the most. And WEI scores are so easily faked.

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

PEBCAK. Mine never gets this hot even though it's overclocked 85% and using the cheap stock cooler, even when at full load for several hours. And zero crashes so far. Didn't see any such reports by anyone else so far either, and they sell a LOT, so if they sucked this badly, we'd be seeing a LOT of such reports and everybody would say they suck, yet, you're the first I see that claims this.

Maybe i'm just an unlucky bastard, however, the E2180 was the first CPU that i ever had trouble with. Just curious, what temps do you get on that stock cooler when overclocked? I doubt they're very pretty.

[Question about my Sound Card + What budget speaker system]

Most small (2-way) speaker systems would have 84 to 88dB @ 1m @ 1W straight on the baffle, so that would take 16W RMS to get to a SPL of 96dB.

16W RMS on small 2-way computer speakers blows them. You can get 96dB out of them before they blow, however, you can't call that music.

[what services WINXP need for internet connection ?]

Try installing without "deleting useful stuff", disable the services one-by-one until "stuff don't work". There's your answer.

Very helpful.

For a LAN router, the only services you need to keep for networking are Network Connections (to be able to configure your connection) and Network Location Awareness (so it doesn't always show "Acquiring Network Address" if you like to keep those little blinking icons in the status bar).

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

The inner part is somewhat faster, but when you increase the amount of seek drastically for every sector you need, you're not gaining anything, much the inverse.

The OUTER part of the hard drive is faster. And HDDs read from the OUTSIDE IN, like old vinyl LPs and unlike CDs. Gotcha there.

It's not really that funny, nor surprising. Eventually they phase out some old things, and stop supporting them. In this case, a codec seemingly. With x64, they also stopped supporting other stuff, like the Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0 ODBC provider, or providing components like ntvdm.

Problem: The file exists. But it doesn't work.

The E2180 processor... It IS a piece of junk. Mine was running at 75C load and was crashing, regardless of how many times i reseated the cooler (Scythe Mugen). I lapped the IHS, still 75C load. I REMOVED THE IHS, still 75C load, **** it! A couple months later it just didn't turn on anymore. The E6550 i bought then runs at 60C loaded at 3.5GHz.

And you should stop arguing with Poolsharkzz. He isn't right in everything but he is pretty close to being. The point is he makes money out of this while you don't. Just one thing i should have to tell you Poolsharkzz, Dell SUCKS. But i agree from buying from a local hardware store when you need warranties, i do the same thing.

Edit: crahak, but what do they do if their old printer does not work with Vista?

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

It's defragged alright, but it still increases head travel by a lot beteen any files and the pagefile, also slowing things down a lot. It can be on your usual partition with your OS, and not be scattered all over the place (defrag works nice).

By putting it onto the OS drive it'll be after the OS files, there will still be head travel between the OS files and the pagefile, and on top of that it's also in a slower area of the drive. And it'll still not be any closer to any other files...

Looks like most of your problems are related to the transition to x64 (you also mentioned your older games worked fine on Vista x86), and not Vista itself.

Well, partly yes. But Vista x86 is SLOW AS HELL, and can't use more than 3.25GB RAM on my machine. What i don't get is if WOW64 has the same files as Vista x86 (which it does), then why doesn't it work for 32-bit apps the same way Vista x86 did?

As about OllyDbg, yes, it's 32-bit. But how the heck am i supposed to debug 32-bit programs with a 64-bit debugger?

What's funny is that those games were coded in Visual C++ 6.0 and use the Microsoft ADPCM codec. Microsoft not supporting programs written with their own software. That's funny.

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

I'll give you an example of how "tweaks" are costing a company more money and time (i.e. my time).

I've been asked to run IT for a small decor company (they do the decor for conferences, weddings, etc etc). They've got four systems around the office, of varying age and performance. I'll start with the "slowest" since it's most relevant to this discussion.

Remember all those people who swore that FAT32 was faster than NTFS? Look back to threads from when XP was first released and people migrated from Win98 to XP. You'll find countless reviews, threads, and articles saying that NTFS is slow and "bloated", etc etc. The previous IT setup the partitions on this system as follows:

C: - 1GB FAT - for pagefile

D: - 4GB FAT32 - for Windows installation, some programs

E: - 8GB FAT32 - for data and programs that didn't fit on D:

Now... the main problem - there's a measly 200MB of free space on D:, since the twit wasn't smart enough to allow enough space for the system. Secondly - why would you put the pagefile on a separate FAT partition? You're increasing the disk head travel time, slowing things down greatly. Finally, they're FAT/FAT32 partitions.

By putting the pagefile on the C: drive he put it in the fastest area of the drive. Having the pagefile all over the drive and fragged into a million pieces is slower than that. I do not agree with FAT32 usage on a XP system however.

The guy had disabled the Network Location Awareness service, bringing up this exact problem for computers connected to the network. Honestly - why would you disable this?

The Network Location Awareness service? I never had a problem with my connection icons getting stuck to "Acquiring network address", since i have them hidden anyway. If you know your connection is fine, why have those blinking thingies there all of the time?

@Th3_uN1Qu3 - If your programs don't work properly in Vista, you should also be talking to your devs to update their software. You're talkingabout making it all Microsoft's fault, like ZA tries to do here. Filezilla is one of the examples that I give to all my friends. The XML settings version threw up UAC warnings left right and center, since you're trying to write files to the Program Files directory. There are countless documents out there, direct from Microsoft to developers, telling them to save settings in AppData or in the user's registry (HKCU - not HKLM). Poor programming is the cause for most UAC prompts out there.

UAC? Well, i thought of it as a good idea. But when i saw it throwing prompts about confirming control panel actions, i said to hell with it and got rid of it promptly. In which way a million nags make the system more secure? Inexperienced users are going to click Yes anyway.

And... what if there are no more devs updating that software? AVIPreview is no longer under development, and my programming knowledge isn't enough to fix it, besides, my favorite debugger (OllyDbg) does not work in Vista! Also i have some older games that need the ADPCM codec (which worked fine under XP and Vista 32). Who's gonna patch those? Well, me. I started coding my own patches for those games, the progress is relatively slow but i reached the point where i know what i have to do, just have to finish the patch code (i work in Python).

Of course poor programming is the cause of most errors. The point is that those "poorly programmed apps" have worked for years on subsequent Windows versions and they suddenly stopped working on Vista 64.

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

Well, let's see if it'll be of any help. Here's how my registry key looks like:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile]
@="Application"
"EditFlags"=hex:38,07,00,00
"TileInfo"="prop:FileDescription;Company;FileVersion"
"InfoTip"="prop:FileDescription;Company;FileVersion;Create;Size"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\DefaultIcon]
@="%1"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\open]
"EditFlags"=hex:00,00,00,00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\open\command]
@="\"%1\" %*"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\runas]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\runas\command]
@="\"%1\" %*"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\CmdLineExt]
@="{9869EFB4-18E9-11D3-A837-00104B9E30B5}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\{882565E4-41BC-4D85-80DF-CBB0099B07AF}]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex\DropHandler]
@="{86C86720-42A0-1069-A2E8-08002B30309D}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\PifProps]
@="{86F19A00-42A0-1069-A2E9-08002B30309D}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\ShimLayer Property Page]
@="{513D916F-2A8E-4F51-AEAB-0CBC76FB1AF8}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\{B41DB860-8EE4-11D2-9906-E49FADC173CA}]
@=""

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

Actually, I'm a very big user of VirtualDubMod myself (I've used it a few hundreds times on this box), and so far I had 0 crashes. None with avipreview either. I didn't see anyone else mention those apps crashing on Vista before either. Sounds like he has codec problems or something along those lines.

It has nothing to do with codecs. I admit i haven't tried VirtualDubMod, i'll try it when i get home, thanks.

jcarle, that was not my point. I rarely run all 3 VMs at the same time. And with this you're also contradicting yourself, you said that Vista runs well on your system even with a hundred processes running. My point is - i shouldn't need to do half my work in the XP 32-bit VM.

About the BIOS thing, i'll try that. And shall i hope that the Adaptec SCSI controller magically vanishes from my Device Manager? Edit: No it did not. And it still takes over 2 minutes to boot if i enable it.

And since i first learned what Windows is, i've always heard this. The problem is with the drivers and the software. It's never, ever, ever Microsoft's fault. Well, what would Vista, and as a matter of fact, any other OS not just Microsoft's, be without drivers and software??? It'd be nothing. I'm not quick to blame everything on Vista. It's just that these programs worked just fine in XP, and still work fine in the XP VM.

PS. If you lived in Romania you would've known how you can blame the highways for your car troubles. :lol:

Poolsharkzz, i agree with most of what you said so i won't lengthen my post anymore. Besides, can anyone blame you for making some fair $$$? I'd love to be in your place.

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

As a matter of fact i had the SCSI controller disabled in the BIOS, but XP was still detecting it.

I think there's a higher chance that you didn't disable the right items in the BIOS more then there are that XP was detecting disabled items.

Fine, genius. BIOS shots coming right up. Point out what i did wrong.

I'm willing to bet if we interviewed any of those people, they'd pretty much say anything because they probably don't even know what they need or not in terms of windows components. I'm sure that if asked today they neither know what a batch file is nor do they remember where or what those icons you told them about are.

You know what, i was lying about the batch files. I rarely do things like that, and only do them to people who know what this stuff is about. And if you leave a big "CLICK HERE TO MAKE THAT WORK" icon, you can be sure everyone's gonna notice it.

People tune their OWN cars, not their neighbour's. I don't walk around the neighbourhood trying to see if I can help one guy get an extra 2 miles a gallon on his drive to work.

I don't walk around my neighborhood tweaking XP installs either. On the other hand, if someone asks me to, i do it.

Vista does a fine job of adjusting itself to your hardware configuration but it can't make miracles if you're running it on underpowered hardware. People such as yourself always want to have all the latest and greatest but don't want to invest in the hardware needed to run it properly. It's funny, on my machine, I run Vista 64 Ultimate that has more "features" then any other version of windows. On top of that, I usually multitask to the point where I have over a hundred something processes running simultaneously. Not to mention that while I'm doing all of that, I'm often doing things like transcoding DVDs in the background. Yet, even with all that going on, Vista is faster on my machine then XP was. You take a F1 driver, throw him into a Pinto and expect him to win the world cup.

Look at my sig, first computer. Do you think that is underpowered for Vista Ultimate 64? I don't have money for Raptors, but shouldn't a 3.5GHz dual core and 6GB RAM be enough? I'll get an E8400 soon and will take it over 4GHz, maybe that will be better. But other than this CPU upgrade i really haven't got money for Raptors, SSDs or the like. I REFUSED to upgrade to Vista till i got the extra 4GB RAM, i ran XP SP2.

I don't multitask to the point that i have 100 processes open (i suppose more than half of that are Windows processes in your case) but i do run a few BIG apps at the same time (Photoshop + Sound Forge + XVI32 on 20-200MB files), and 3 virtual machines. They work fine, but stuff like AVIPreview or VirtualDub (even the x64 version) or OllyDbg crash mysteriously, so i run them in the XP 32 virtual machine, which is considerably slower.

I didn't say Vista 64 is slower than XP. With all that RAM (and yes it is dual channel, 2x 1GB + 2x 2GB) it runs faster than XP 32-bit which would only be able to see half the RAM anyway, however it's much more buggy.

Edit: Here are the BIOS shots from my dual-PIII. If you'd kindly show me what i did wrong, i would really appreciate that.

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

The example you gave was machine-specific, and if there isn't an option in the BIOS to disable the onboard SCSI controller then sure, Device Manager would be the way forward - but that has zero impact on system performance and I would say the delay is down to the driver or BIOS, not the OS.

Any post-install customization takes you further from the "out of the box" configuration and into territory where all sorts of issues (possibly way, way down the line) can occur - disabling devices in Device Manager to me is a last resort, and disabling Windows services via the Services Control Panel applet is something to look at for servers to be deployed in DMZs or secured environments as a security hardening procedure, not for performance.

Well, of course it was machine-specific. Are there any "generic" computers out there? As a matter of fact i had the SCSI controller disabled in the BIOS, but XP was still detecting it. And of course tweaking services takes you away from the "out of the box" configuration, it lets you set up your system the way you want it, and use only the parts that you really need.

Yes, you can eke out a relatively small decrease in startup time and virtual memory consumption with knowledge of the OS, your system and what you have changed - but I wouldn't do this for other users' systems (only 3rd party service tweaking when they are causing problems, like someone who had Norton and Norman anti-virus installed at the same time which deadlocked the system ~30 seconds after startup and neither would uninstall properly).

I don't exactly tweak a lot on other peoples' systems, i said so above. I don't have time for that anyway, but i ask what they run and only turn off a couple of things they really don't need, and also leave batch files for re-enabling them, named "click here if you have trouble with (wifi, lan sharing, blah blah blah). Simple, fast, and effective.

It's basically the same reason why people tune cars. Some tune them for performance, some tune them for better fuel savings. If all cars would've been perfect, no one would need to tune them, and the ones who would try would eventually revert them to stock configuration as they ran better that way. Exactly the same goes for computers as well, regardless if it's software or hardware.

When you need to use all those services or have resources to waste, you just leave everything as it is (and install Norton ). Honestly, i had to disable more than half of Vista 64's "features" (retail copy, not pre-tweaked in any way) to have it feel right. I kept Aero (actually Aero and DX10 are the only reasons i run Vista), but disabled all its animations and stuff. And then i found myself doing half of my stuff in a 32-bit XP VM, because just about everything except Crysis, Opera and Solitaire, crashes under Vista. And no, it's not due to my tweaking, i reverted to out-of-the-box configuration yet it still does the same.

I don't mind a pretty interface as long as it's still functional and doesn't slow down my work. But when it does, it's time to trim it a little.

Edit: jcarle, i know my boards' BIOSes like i know the palm of my hand. Onboard SCSI IS set to Disabled yet XP still picks it up. Want a photo of that? And if you mention the classic theme, why shouldn't one disable the themes service entirely? The Classic theme is still sluggish compared to disabling the service. Please tell me a piece of software that explicitly requires the Themes service enabled.

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

I don't see where i got emotional... Anyway, i'll be leaving. See you later.

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

I feel that Black Viper's list is a collection of such statements that people often follow blindly and acts as a placebo.

Performance needs to be measured accurately, with a baseline and changes being made individually to observe their impact - also as Zxian mentioned "startup times" are nowhere near as important as "operational speed" - with S3 sleep mode boot times become completely irrelevant for workstations and I see this being the future, and for most applications once they are loaded into memory their performance is unlikely to be affected by other consumers of virtual memory (as unneeded ones will already have been paged to disk anyway).

Trying to measure how optimized a system is based on the amount of memory (physical or virtual) is committed, how long it takes to start up or where CPU cycles are being spent (when not at 100% for long periods of time) can turn out to be inaccurate, so a false economy to try to "fix".

I don't follow BlackViper's guide blindly. Actually, when i first messed up with services i had no idea that such a site existed.

Okay, let me give you a real-world example. My dual-PIII used to take over 2 minutes to boot, and most of that 2 minutes the bar just scrolled and scrolled, with no HDD activity. I opened up Device Manager and disabled the onboard SCSI controller that i wasn't using since i have a SATA card. Now it takes 40 seconds, half of which are the hardware checks - Windows itself boots in 20 seconds.

In your opinion, should i be so nice to let Windows handle it, and enable the SCSI controller back so i have time for a snack till my computer boots? And unfortunately S3 doesn't work on this machine.

@ jcarle: If everything i've been doing was wrong, i couldn't have been able to type this post since a lot of people would be chasing me and trying to kick my butt.

Lack of education huh? Well, i still have a lot to learn, but i wouldn't put it that way.

[Why on-board isn't bad...]

onboard sound tends to suck though, you usually get feedback when you move the mouse etc

i do have HD595's though

I've only seen the mouse/video feedback issue on poorly shielded homemade audio amps.

[Why on-board isn't bad...]

how about a true full load test of a onboard nic against this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...Tpk=killer%2bm1

Wow, and i thought people here actually knew what they are doing... The Killer NIC is one overpriced marketing gimmick. It is cool if you want a mini Linux to play with inside your computer, but it won't magically lower your ping. And it would be $230 vs free, which is an unfair comparison in itself.

What about on-board sound? I have an Audigy 2 card, but I notice that the on-board sound is about as good quality-wise. Of course, the Audigy is much nicer in a lot of ways outside of the sound that it delivers, but the question I would have is whether or not most sound cards today would exceed what is on the board for sound for most applications.

Maybe that's the discussion point for this thread - when does on-board become "not enough"?

If you do not game any, and listen to music through $10 PC speakers, onboard will do fine. When you get a decent speaker system (and i don't mean Logitech) the difference is obvious.

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

No, I don't believe that everything MS makes is perfect, but having dealt with several OSes on various hardware, I'd say that it's better than the rest at a lot of things.

Such as? A lot of talk but no hard examples.

BV makes it seem as though you can disable those "unnecessary" services at will and not worry about the possible repercussions of doing so. The worst part of it all - if something breaks, you often don't know which service it is that is required without a lot of trial and error.

That happens if you don't read the service descriptions.

If you want to disable services on your own computer, go for it. If you're doing work for others, chances are you'll end up disabling something that's going to cause them problems later. While this might end up giving Poolsharkzz more customers in the long run, I think it's just wrong, and isn't worth the "OMG 3 seconds faster boot" that you get.

When i disable stuff on other peoples' computers i only disable those that i'm sure they aren't going to need, and ask about it. "Do you need LAN networking" "No, i only use the internet." 2 services less. And i leave a little batch file. "Well, if you're ever going to need it, run this and reboot." No one ever called me back saying stuff doesn't work, and i've done quite a few installs.

EVERY time I nlited my system or started tweaking services, something broke in the end. My laptop had a plain vanilla install of XP on it for two years. No tweaks, no services disabled, just plain XP and updates. Number of incompatibilities with software - zero. Number of times I needed to enable a service for something - zero. It worked. Plain and simple.

I'd bet you guys a beer that the OP's uncle would rather have a system that works reliably rather than one that's 10% faster. As you're typing your reply - is your browser that much faster at responding to your typing if you've twaked your system?

That's bad luck for you. The furtherly tweaked TinyXP Platinum 2 install i have here on my dual-PIII is 2 years old, and survived being moved from an IDE HDD to a SATA one attached to a PCI controller card, 2 CPU upgrades and one mobo swap. It still boots in 20 seconds. 17 processes at idle, that's including the Vista Drive indicator, ATi Tray Tools, and the two processes for my multimedia keyboard and special mouse buttons, so that's 13 Windows processes. It does everything i need it to do, and never had any software which didn't install. Oh, and i still get automatic updates.

And tell me, do you need the wireless monitor always running on a computer that will never have a wireless card? Or the Server/Workstation services on a computer that will never need to share files via LAN? Or even worse, Remote Registry??? Those are only potential security holes. The more you plug from the get go, the less you have to deal with later on.

[Why on-board isn't bad...]

Others have however.

I used to as well. But onboard chips have evolved a lot.

I still 100% disagree. Non-gaming video suck at gaming, sure. No one's gonna say different. But just like me & cluberti said, onboard video is plenty for a LOT of people (non-gaming usage). I see no difference at all (performance wise) between a pair of $1000 video cards taking 100W each and onboard video. What you seem not to get is that we're not all gamers.

You don't need a pair of $1k video cards, as a matter of fact i couldn't afford to spend more than $250 on my video card. However, a $40 card still runs circles around your onboard, uses the same amount of power and can provide useful features like HDMI output for a big display, you said you are watching HD video yourself.

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

I tend to use this a lot lately... are you guys drunk? (Zxian excluded)

Anyone who writes Microsoft with a $, refers to BlackViper and suggests turning off the DNS Client then replacing it with a hosts file shouldn't be distributing that kind of poor advice. Those are the people that drive systems into a mess that professional technicians such as ourselves end up cleaning up for people. You want a fast and reliable system? Clean install XP with SP3, install the latest drivers and move up to 2GB of RAM and you'll have a wonderful system without the mess caused by those so called "tweaks".

Why do we all need to move up to 2GB RAM? XP's minimum requirement is 64MB btw, and it actually runs with lower than that. And his uncle's mobo doesn't even support more than 512MB.

Do you think everything that Microsoft makes is perfect? If it were, nobody would've been tweaking it as we would've been all happy with it out of the box. I've been a happy TinyXP user for 2 years and continue to be. My retail copy of XP (which i bought only after SP1 came out btw, i ran 98SE till then) has been sitting on the shelf for a lot of time. And my retail Vista Ultimate 64 has been nothing but a waste of money.

And what exactly did BlackViper do wrong? Explain please. And no, i'm not drunk. Why does everybody that tweaks his Windows OS have to be drunk? Oh, and i write Microsoft whatever way i want to. It's called freedom of speech.

[Why on-board isn't bad...]

Orthos by default runs with LOWEST priority, meaning it'll give away CPU power at any time to any other program that might need it. I want to see a Priority 9 test.

I never said all onboard chips are bad. Onboard VIDEO still sucks though.

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

Agreed 100%, Poolsharkzz. I've ran underpowered computer systems for a long while till i finally saved money to afford a proper rig. And i've learnt a lot this way.

It's funny how the mods of this forum reply to any affirmation not matching their views with "Are you drunk?" or "I agree, but what happens later?" I am a moderator of a forum myself. And when the admin promoted me for helping out people and being nice, i saw that as a huge privilege. And i still enjoy moderating to the day, and actually keep on topic, and when i give warnings or bans it's because they deserved it. Of course, to most of you i may count as "a kid", i'm only 17. But there's one thing you gotta realize - kids these days have so many more ways to learn, and learn faster. And you should never forget that you should never despise those that are, in some way, lower than you, because you can learn a lot from anyone in this world.

Me and Poolsharkzz gave on-topic advice. You come and say something that translates into "he should just get a new computer". What if he doesn't need a new computer??? What if he's happy with his current computer and doesn't want more?

As a matter of fact, i have a 24" flat CRT here on my dual-PIII. But it's a TV, and that means running 1024x768 on a display that can only do 720x576 natively. Just a few hours ago i popped the thing open and was tweaking focus so i could read text better. Because i can't afford a new monitor here at the moment, so i get by with what i can. Yesterday i was running around the house chasing and killing bugs.

Yeah, i do have a pretty high-end rig at home, but it took a while of running crap PCs to save money for that. And what do i get - 3 graphics cards fried in 8 months (warranty ftw), and my current HD3870 suffering from a design flaw which makes the memory overheat and artifact - it needs a new cooler. But why should i buy a new cooler to fix a flaw that shouldn't be there in the first place? Anyway, i realized i'm much more happy with my dual-PIII than my C2D. I tweak at it all day when it needs tweaking, but once i'm done tweaking it runs without a single hitch, for months on end.

So why should the OP's uncle get a new computer with Vista if he can check his email just fine on his current PIII?

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

Yes, a few of the services listed (3?) are "shared" with Vista, or should "only be" for Vista, but are indeed a part of SP3. These were ported back for XP.

I'm sure you will want to fix that.

poolsharkzz

Well, my bad then. I didn't update to SP3 and have no intention of doing so.

[Trimming down a less than reliable XP system]

Poolsharkzz, some of the services you listed are Vista services, and he runs XP. You'll want to fix that.

Agreed on all the rest, and you can have a XP computer with internet functionality AND themes with just 11 processes running. I've done it several times.

[Saving old hardware]

Excuse me jumping into the middle of a very interesting topic, but as regards this:

what software do you use to turn this into a router?

I use FREESCO. www.freesco.org