EV> Because this XP MCE 2005 SP3 computer has been acting very slow 

1. how many items do you have in the tray beside the clock?

2. it is possible that you have things preloading and consuming memory to
make their startup appear faster... FF, Office, openoffice and many others
have this functionality... i always disable it and don't worry about the
extra few seconds it takes to load them when i want to use them... there's
no need for them to be preloaded and consuming memory and CPU if you are
not using them...

)\/(ark