Just by turning off the XP graphics and desktop, it now looks like the old Windows 9X and it is running 1,000% better than it did previously.
Everything loads and runs faster: Internet Explorer, SeaMonkey, Avast
, Outlook Express and the audio doesn't skip when I play a music CD.
Avast also no longer hangs when I click the Details icon in the Update (Basic) settings window.
Tomorrow, I will do a full system virus scan. Now that the system is running considerably faster, I want to see how long it takes Avast to do a full scan. With all of the graphics previously turned on, other anti-virus products would take a good 2 hours to perform a virus scan, this was after SP 2 was installed. With SP 1 installed prior, it took the same software only 45 minutes to perform the same scan.