I can't agree with not defragging your Hard Drive, but some of the steps they recommend really do speed up XP. The one that really helped me was clearing out the Windows Prefetch folder! I had 124 items there, and most I hadn't used in over a year. Once I deleted all the files in the folder (Don't delete the actual folder!!!) I rebooted, and boot time and over all response times were so much better! Location of the files: C:\Windows\Prefetch
For more tips, here is the Article:
23 Ways To Speed WinXP <i>Without</i> Defrag - Custom Systems/White Box - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness
