If you also want to speed up your Windows XP box, the following link serves as a good article.

Windows XP Definitive Performance Tweaking guide


Real life incident:
Shuva: (@ office, losing patience waiting for his laptop to shut down). I will take this question to my grave.
Anadi : What question?
Shuva : Why does Windows take a lifetime to shutdown?
Anadi : (brief pause, shakes his legs as usual, thinks)
...
...
Anadi : Everybody takes a lifetime to shutdown.


Happy Tweaking.//