Hi all, new to the forums here, got redirected to this nice site from another. I have been reading a bit here on the forums, and I will continue, but some of this stuff escapes me. Any way, I have Vista Ultimate x64 installed, and since I have had it installed, I have had several updates, and SP 1 installed, and drivers for all of my various equipment. Lately, Vista seems unstable, I am having increased boot times, programs are taking longer to load, and some times they even hang, there seems to be more sporadic jumps in the cpu usage at idle then before (sometimes up to 50%), and there just seems to be a lot of scattered remains from programs I have used and taken off. So like I usually do after a couple of months, is do a fresh install. I want to make a striped down version though. I want to include SP1, and all of the updates (if possible?), and add all of the drivers to the drivers already installed. Also I am wondering if someone with more experience than me (basically everyone on here lol) can help me configure services and what not to ensure that the least amount of stuff is running on my machine, and that nothing connects to the net w/o my knowledge. I read the step by step for vlite and SP1, but it does not go into drivers or updates etc...also do I need both the WAIK AND Windows Imaging Driver? Or does either one work? Forgive me if all of this has already been covered, and feel free to point it out if I missed it! Also, don't be afraid to treat me like an illiterate and walk me through this step by step Thanks!