Ancient, do a search on Google for Karoush Ghazi's Tweakguide for XP. I think his website is tweakguides.com. Anyhoo, it's a free download and a very worthwhile read. Should have most of the answers you need and then some. Helped me loads with my stone-age laptop.
Anyone giving you an answer such as do this do that is being very nice but they're not really helping you. Give a man a fish and all that.
He also has a guide for Vista should anyone need it.