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I know the above ideas are excellent but consider the following ideas if unsuccessful

You say that you have some programs and files that you do not want, dont know where they came from or how they got into your computer and as of yesterday… BLAH —- BLAH, —- BLAH, —-You won’t be able to tell exactly what system file it refers to at this point, but you will know that a system file or a few of them are involved in what you are trying to delete.———–
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Nope, nope, and more no. Ignore this post. Deleting temp files does nothing more than free hard drive space and system restore doesn’t tend to malware.

You said you weren’t having issues with the computer what-so-ever before the RAM upgrade. Just curious, was there only one stick of RAM installed originally?

You should definitely ensure you are deleting erroneous files and nothing that has dependencies or registry references. I don’t want to revert to the “are you sure it’s plugged in” routine, but manually deleting files that are in use can throw up a slew of error messages on os boot and prevent other useful programs from loading correctly.

If the file is in use, there was something that put it into use. Deleting the file won’t delete the reference to it, so search through your registry first and delete binary keys that point to the filename and extension. You may also have to fuss around with unregistering a few dll files if there are any associated dependencies. The easiest way to find out is by using Dependcy Walker. After a reboot you should be able to simply delete the file directly, but if that still doesn’t work – FileAssassin or Unlocker would also do the trick.

Uninstallers don’t always do the best job removing files and registry settings and a lot of app developers hope that you’ll reinstall their software at some point in the future so they’ll purposely leave user settings, configuration files, and registry settings behind even without permission. As a general rule of thumb, it’s not a good idea to continually install and uninstall software a lot. However, apps like Revo Uninstaller scan though app directories and the registry for leftovers.

Ah well, just got round to doing the recovery. After a couple of attempts (first one couldn’t find the hard disk!), it only gave me one partition – the recovery one, so it can’t find XP and as this partition only has 287Mb free, it’s unlikely to work. I used the CD which came with the PC – it’s a Mesh one – I don’t have any other CDs. Looks increasingly like Linux is the answer!

Oh and F.U.N. I can’t get to a command line as it doesn’t even boot into XP anyway – even in safe mode. And I have no idea what a UBCD4Win CD is – so I probably don’t have one lying around!

Sure this isn’t a simple MBR corruption? You could have that fixed in 10 minutes with a Ubuntu Live CD like this.

Do your research; I’m still a little unclear whether a VHD will resort to using virtualized drivers that interact with the host PC’s hardware or if you’ll need to install XP version drivers for your new hardware. It’s less than likely that drivers even exist, so that would be a deal breaker.

All the tutorials I keep finding on the net talk about running Windows 8 from VHD on an old XP machine… which is scary and kind of sad. However, I imagine you could essentially do the same from within Windows 8. You could use VMware to create a VHD with Windows XP installed on it, then configure the VM so that it writes and reads a raw and separate partition instead of padded VHDD storage. Move the VHD to the separate partition and then use a boot manager to point at your Windows 8 partition, and the XP VHD image on the new partition.

Legally, everybody has been right. You won’t be able to use the OEM copy of XP you have. If you find out you don’t need drivers, it might still be worth buying a non-OEM XP SP3 install disc and licence; especially if you specifically use software that isn’t compatible with Win8.

There are still other options. For $60, there’s CrossOver Linux which is touted for it’s compatibility with Windows software. Check their “What Runs” section to ensure it’s worth a purchase. If you insist on a free option, there’s always Wine, but it runs under Linux and some distros force you to install and configure it. Depends on how much you want to screw around with this project I guess.

I don’t bother unless I’m dealing with several HDDs of the same size. Gotta double-check those drive labels and partition sizes, man. I’ve encountered the rare drive label flip where secondary drive letters are juxtaposed, and I’ve heard horror stories from other techs, but I’ve never personally formatted the wrong partition before.

Sounded like a RAM issue. I used to work at GeekSquad and it wasn’t uncommon for the counter staff to try to “get their hands dirty” by doing something simple like installing RAM only to bork it up because they don’t have any experience. Fortunately, (back then) we would run MemTest86 after every installation to ensure the RAM was good before it went back to the customer, but places that run like little rinky-dink rip-offs of GeekSquad rarely waste the time.

It doesn’t take two weeks to RAM test, replace some DIMM, and retest; even if they’ve been busy otherwise. Good luck getting the store management to work with you, though. Since the issue wasn’t caught within the first 14 days, the store is now at a loss for the hardware. If they just would have checked their work like any normal repair tech would have the whole situation could have been averted – so it is their fault and they should make reparations somehow. Just don’t expect to walk out of the store with the RAM upgrade and a full refund without a serious conversation.

If you truly want a lean and fast machine, have you tried Portable versions of apps?

Portable apps don’t actually ‘install’, so the registry stays quick.
Portable apps also attempt to not store data outside of their own folders- makes backing up MUCH easier.

I currently have Chrome Portable, SeaMonkey Portable, and others on my main machine.
Don’t have flash installed; Chrome portable has it. Now I only use Chrome for flash sites and SeaMonkey for everything else.

I also have MS Security Essentials and about 15 other on-demand antivirus scanners.

I didn’t read the rules fully yet, so I apologize if links are a no-no

Portableapps.com

All legal to use- no viruses, no malware.
Other imitator sites might, but this one doesn’t.

Switching all my apps to portable versions cut my boot time from 45s to 6s
Opening an app takes roughly 20% longer, but shutdown is also much speedier.
Updating the apps are a breeze, the ‘base’ app (custom start menu app) includes updating and checking for more verified safe free portable apps.

Definitely take a look if you are truly anal about a lean and fast machine. Might be what you are looking for, or maybe I zigged when you zagged…?

Uh… portable apps tend to be far more RAM heavy than their installable counterparts since most of them use a sandbox to translate file paths, registry settings, external file dependencies, and file writes so they have no permanent effect on the OS they’re being run from. That sandbox has to load before the app does and runs from RAM which means slower application load times and more RAM use. I don’t want to sound hypocritical because I do run a few portable apps on my PC I have saved to the HDD but they’re simple utilities; most under 1MB, not a 60MB portable version of Chrome.

There is a far simpler way to prevent apps from starting up with the operating system unnecessarily; plus, I have severe trouble believing you shaved 39 seconds off of your boot time by only switching to portable applications. That doesn’t make a lick of sense.

I’ve chatted with a lot of people who support the theory that allowing apps to modify Windows registry eventually bogs down the OS. There is some logic to that statement; users who habitually install and uninstall applications can quickly bloat out the registry, but most apps don’t ‘search’ for entries. Most app developers assume that once their app writes a value to the registry, it’ll remain there. When it’s needed, it’s specifically pointed to; not searched for. I’m not certain and if somebody else knows better – please say something; but I think Windows only parses the entire registry once per boot. Otherwise, there are very few apps and very few times the OS ‘searches through’ the registry. In other words, there’s no other cause of slowdown. While it might be argued that a bloated registry could slow OS boot, there just isn’t much support for the idea that it bogs down the entire operating system performance over time. There are other causes for that like hardware thermal dispersal and EoL, HDD underpreformance, third-party startup apps and services, malware, heavy pagefile use… I could keep going.

From a minimalist perspective, *SOME* portable apps work well, but usually when they’re specifically programmed to be portable and don’t use a sandbox. Example? XMplay. It doesn’t use any kind of application extraction layer to prevent writing to the registry, it just keeps all it’s settings in an external INI file. Otherwise, using lofty portable apps is the opposite of running a lean and fast machine.