If they did that they would have a TON of windows updates to do plus likely all 3 service packs to deal with. Any of those items you listed try doing a google search for them and you will quickly find out what they belong to, or use a program like free start up lite by the makers of malwarebytes. StartUpLite avg= your antivirus is AVG? you do not want to stop that for sure. you can use a process library to find what each one is and does, what ever you do, DO NOT use a registry cleaner! if this is a dell then the dsca is a dell file C:\Program Files\Dell Support Center\gs_agent\custom\dsca.exe DSCA is Dell's remote-support app. If you're relying on Dell's remote-desktop support, do not delete it. but it does not need to be in your start up list. msseces.exe (Microsoft Security Essentials) are you using both AVG and Microsoft Security Essentials on your pc for Antivirus? if so you need to fully remove one of them you should only run one full time AV at a time that will cause conflicts. smax4pnp.exe (SoundMax controls) you can look up the rest of them there at the pcpitstop library if you want. another good free program that can help you with this kind of stuff is winpatrol WinPatrol

before you do that have you updated your Vista to the latest service pack? if not do that and try it, that has helped many people who had the earlier versions of vista. have you gone to the manufactures site of the software you are having problems with to see if they provide a vista solution or driver etc which would aid in it working with vista? going backward would be a last option, you mention you have an xp license did it come on a pc? you would be going to a completely different pc and that is not allowed, I would definitely make sure that what you have would be allowed or you may end up not being able to activate it. Definitely make a few good images of the system with Vista on it in case you find you need to go back to Vista that way you will have it exactly as you were before you messed with it. disk imaging software there that is a free imaging program you can use. I am not sure what is built in to Vista for that. Here is a link to a pc magazine article on downgrading How to Downgrade from Vista to XP If you were to go to widows 7 instead which would be going in the right direction there is on certain versions of 7 the option to run xp within 7 so that any programs that run on xp would be able to run within 7 that way as in a virtual machine situation.

if you took your pc into a repair shop and they returned it with the xp repair infection still on it you need to get your money back and never take anything back there again. You have a serious rogue infection on your pc. Anyone that knows anything would have informed you of that and gone through the cleaning process. You need to go to the forum I am going to link to and register there, start a new thread of your own there in the area I link to. Tell them what you have told here and you can put a link to this thread too. You will be assisted by the team there to go through the clean up procedure to be rid of this infection. It is not one you can do with out assistance. Once you begin there please just stick with the team there and only follow those directions so there is no confusion or conflict. I am there also if you need help getting started. Analysis and Malware Removal do not do anything else to your pc and lets hope they did not clear out any of your temp file folders. do not attempt to follow the directions from bleeping computer alone get the help at LzD to guide you.

More memory is good but at some point there is a diminishing return on the investment and that point is a function of what you are doing with your computer. Things like first person shooter games, video editing, photo editing (of very large files) all benefit from lots of memory. Writing an email to Aunt Betty doesn't require very much memory at all because the computer can process information far faster than you can type. Same thing for the Internet, your computer can render pages faster than your connection can supply the information. So if you have a slow internet connection, you're not likely to experience much, if any improvement. With that said, 4 gigs is probably a pretty good number. If you really want a WOW factor, get a solid state drive and use that for your O/S and critical applications. To try and answer some of your questions: - Windows doesn't care about the physical drive or any logical partitions. It does make good sense to install Windows 7 on the newer, faster drive. You'll get the best performance that way. When it comes time to get rid of XP, everything will be on one drive and that, if nothing else, should help you keep things mentally organized. - My understanding is that you have two physical drives, one with a functioning version of XP and the other blank. If that is not correct, say so NOW. - When you go to install Windows 7, it will recognize that there is another operating system (Windows XP) already installed. Windows 7 won't do anything to XP other than to set up the dual boot. Essentially it's computer language that says, "XP is there, Windows 7 is here, which one do you want to use?" - Logical partitions to a drive a largely a function of personal preference. Understand that it is more difficult (but not impossible) to non-destructively repartition a drive after you put data on it. If you, for example, have a partition for music, another for videos, and a third for pictures and find down the road that you have a lot more videos than music, it becomes more difficult to rearrange things. My suggestion is a single, large partition and use folders to organize your data.