And run msconfig, disable all startup programs except your antivirus. Anything else you need you should start yourself.
I run Vista, came standard, dont want to take it off my lappy because of driver issues with my various extras.
If you know a little bit, or want to learn, you can fiddle with your windows services. My machine is streamlined like a bat because i dont have anything running that i dont need.
4GB ram, Centrino Duo, geforce 9600 GT, and it runs everything that the current market can throw at it.
Its an acer, and i have modded the firmware (which you can get from laptopvideo2go.com/ ) which gave a massive performance boost for gaming.
Disabling your windows themes, running defrag often, and freeing as much space as u can on your harddrive all help with the speed.
Delete your temp internet files regularly, and if your HDD is constantly working in overdrive that means that something is sapping your resources.
Try ctrl+alt+delete, go to processes and sort em by mem usage. Then you will see the culprit. Most likely it is your antivirus.. Turn off automatic scanning, but leave active shield on, and close all your user tasks that you dont need(sort by user name)
Perhaps try a less demanding antivirus like AVG if you are using Norton etc..
Thats all i can think of off the top of my head..
Vista can work just fine if you tweak and fiddle with it a lot...
But switching to win7 or even XP will give u an amazing change..
