Don -

Probably adequate memory is the easiest "speedup" for WinXP for those moving from an older system. On very old machines, processor speed may be a factor.

"Adequate" hard drive space is necessary, but it's hard to be specific about what you need without looking at all of the load you've got up. It's generally helpful to keep at least 20% freespace on the primary drive/partition.

If you don't have a specific need to keep an older format, NTFS is the recommended one for WinXP drives, and it does allow use of some automated utilities that may make response a little faster in many cases. It depends some on what kinds of programs you usually run. (It usually also makes defrag somewhat less tedious.)

John