This is an extract from a guide that I am selling on eBay called Easy Xp Tweaks   its aim is to make your computer faster along with many other useful things

Our First Tweak, Turning off Indexing service.

Windows XP contains a service that indexes all the files on your hard drive so that when you use search files are found faster. The problem with this is it slows the computer down a heap. And unless you use search everyday, several times a day with advanced options on (in other words a lot more than any one really does) it uses up more time that is saves because it slows the computer down. So what we are really doing doing is slowing search down a bit (and not much) and making everything else run faster. Try timing how long your computer takes to start before and after doing this you may be surprised at the difference. So lets get started.

• Open up "My Computer"

• Right-click on all your hard drives (usually "C:" if you only have one) and choose "Properties"

Uncheck the box at the bottom that reads "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching"

• Click OK then the files will be removed from memory. This removal may take a few minutes to complete, but it's worth it.

• When this is happening it is normal for there to be errors that say it can not be applied to some files, this is because they are being used by the computer, just ignore it.

• If the box to untick is not there it is because your file system dose not support having it on, which means you are lucky and don't have to do this tweak but you can still do that next bit for a small gain.

Now we need to disable the Indexing service that make it possible for indexing to happen.

Go to Start > Run

• Type “services.msc” and then press enter.

• Scroll-down to "Indexing Service" and double-click it

• If the service status is "Running", then stop it by pressing the "Stop" button

• To make sure this service doesn't run again, under "Startup Type:", choose "Disabled"