Need some advice here

[save]

you should check so graphics card are not on same IRQ as somethng else , typically ATA interface drivers.

Has been a big issue for me in xp hstorically, but never in the win7.

[save]

if you find you're graphics card IRQ collide, you can either reassign it manually, if that don't work, take card out, start machine, stop it after OS loads, button off, card in, power on.

[Skuzzy]

My view is that it doesn't matter how many processes are running -- only how much CPU is being used.  If it's 5% or less by everything else, that isn't going to impact things significantly.  When you run AH, check your CPU usage (via task manager).  It probably isn't stuck near 100% while running AH, so a few percent devoted to other background things won't matter.

That is actually not quite true.  DirectX is designed to use 100% of the CPU.  It is the only system in Windows designed to do so.  If you are getting steady usage above 0%, when nothing is running, it will impact game performance.

That's what I thought at first too..

However, I just ran a full scan with Avast, but it didn't find anything.  So I am not sure why it has so many processes. When I look in Processes (after ctrl+alt+delete) Most of them are SYSTEM processes. There are only a handful of non-system listed processes that are a necessity (like explorer, which apparently is the start menu and all that, found out the hard way on that one).

So, I am not sure of what to shut down in terms of processes.

Tinkles

<<S>>

Avast is not going to detect malware/spyware.  It will miss most all of it.

If you allow Microsoft to update those video card drivers, then you might as well bne prepared to do a complete reinstall of Windows.  1)  The latest drivers are NOT the best drivers for that old video card.  2)  Microsoft updater does not clean out the old drivers before installing new ones, which WILL cause problems when changing from some versions of drivers to others.

[TequilaChaser]

As Skuzzy just posted and MrRipley posted earlier, you might be better off backing up your Aces High game settings   folder
and any other files / folders you may want....

Then reformat and do a fresh install of winxp, be sure to do a regular format ( I personally never recommend anyone using the quick format option ), also winxp will ask you which file type you want to use! Use/Select the NTFS file structure!!!

Don't select the FAT32 file structure option....

As for your current winxp dxdg report, a normal clean regular winxp should be showing your pagefile used at or around  180mb or less with processes in the 35 down to 28 running, before any tweaking of the processes/pagefile

A well tweaked winxp OS with very little effort can get a person's system to around 25 processes running and a pagefile used of 125+/-mbs....

An extreme tweak , people can get down to 18 or less processes running(including Aces High) and a pagefile of100 mbs or less used

Hope this helps

TC