Mark,

When you have your computer on and running, do "control, alt, delete" to bring up the Task Manager and look to see how many programs are running. If things like RealAudio and QuickTime are running, then they've loaded when the program started. You can use that little program I linked to to tell those programs not to automatically turn themselves on when the computer starts. They can come up on demand.

I'll take a look at the System Properties Advanced tab on the kids' computer. They've complained about XP being slow (I did put in the Service Pack, so that could be part of it). Thanks for that tip.

SRS