My OS was ME...pcpitstop reported that my system was fast (score 254) with AMD K6-III 500 CPU...5AXmobo...20gigHDD...640MbDRAM..NvidiaTNT2pro.....After upgrade to XP home and converting to NTFS my score is around 150!! Does anybody have any tips for me?

Score isn't that cut and dry. Looks for things like security, etc. If you haven't run security patches, score will be lower. For example, I do a fresh install of Win98SE, run the machine thru PC pitstop's tests and get a baseline score. After naming Logical Drives, installing OE patches (which change security settings for restriced sites), etc. Score goes up considerably. NTFS can lower your score as it is a bit more CPU intensive especially if using compressed or encrypted folders.

I was paroosing the Net for something else but came across your plea. I would like to answer your question this way...Windows 95/98/ME were all DOS based..i.e. DOS loaded first and then the Win Software loaded on top of it. Now I don't know what other kinds of tests you have tried but I think that you will find that STRAIGHT DOS is pretty fast. It doesn't have to redraw all those fancy graphics. Now when you put a point N click environment on top of it you will slow it down some. Then when you make the whole enchalada point N click you cause even more slow downs. Then, as mentioned by the other reply, you have to account for security. This is another delay caused by checking the data to make sure that it is valid and not going to cause corruption. Back in the good ol' days when people were more trust worthy we didn't get slowed down by these extra checks. During my computer involvement I have "graduated" from a 2Mhz IMSAI 8080 with cassett tape storage to a 4Mhz Z-100 8085/8086 to a 66Mhz 486 tower to a 200Mhz Pentium tower to a 350Mhz Pentium2 tower to a 650Mhz Pentium3 tower and finally to a 2Ghz Pentium4 tower. Operating systems during these changes ranged from C/PM thru DOS, Window and Linux. I have been somewhat disappointed in the supposed "Performance Increases" as I moved up. At around the P3 I "expected" to see things just jumping on my screen. I really haven't see that. Not even with my latest P4. The most impressive performance boost that I have seen in all this was when I installed the 66Mhz 486 with enough memory to have a ram disk and then I saw things move. Other than that, the increases in system performance haven't been all that impressive. We've had to make them faster to handle all this graphic point N click. WinXP software initially installed takes more disk space than was even thought of just a few years ago. 1.2GB just for the operating system. And finally if your test was performed over the Network then it could be affected by the traffic at that time. Take care and have fun..

Good point. It's so true, as computers get faster, the OS requirements get higher. I remeber one of my first computers (not including the good old Commodre 64) only had a 250 MB HD, I thought that was amazing! How would I ever fill that much space!?! lol "What a wicked web we weave"

Good point. It's so true, as computers get faster, the OS requirements get higher. I remember one of my first computers (not including the good old Commodre 64) only had a 250 MB HD, I thought that was amazing! How would I ever fill that much space!?! lol "What a wicked web we weave"

I remember I got my first hard drive when they first came out. I remember thinking how I could ever fill it. It was huge... 10meg.....

Win xp runs like hell with 64 Mb ram. At 128 mb it is stil swapping much. And it begins to run fast with 256 Mb ram.