Steve Bass writes about an MS KB article that explains why XP SP 2 might slow your system down.  Steve Bass link here, Microsoft link here.

Microsoft’s reasons why you may have a slowdown:

• You have spyware or malware running on the computer.
• You have viruses that are running on the computer.
• You do not have sufficient free space on the hard disk.
• You do not have sufficient random access memory (RAM) installed on the computer.
• You have corrupted or outdated drivers.
• You have too many files in the Recycle Bin or temporary folders

In other words, a general statement of the obvious to any reasonably technical computer user.

As I’ve said before, there is no excuse these days not to have XP SP 2 on your system.  From a security standpoint, it’s absolutely essential.  For example, we have never been able to infect an XP SP 2 system with the keyloggers we’ve found through an exploit.  But do you know that one of the people we found infected with that Winldra keylogger back in August was a security professional?  It was on his laptop and he hadn’t bothered to get SP 2.  I think he was more of a Linux guy at work and his laptop was not his primary work system, maybe used for personal stuff. He had just never applied SP 2.    

Alex Eckelberry