some comments by an xp nlite user: r2kTrader: "Just be careful when you use nLite. Make sure you include legacy odbc drivers, etc. You may have issues with NT and Jet 4.0 (for some reason they are using .mdb files instead of MSDE) XPLite is nice as well, but there is nothing like nLite. Also, I actually got my XP to run and start up and work perfect with only 6 services running total. Also, here is something you might want to consider. Do a factory install of your system. Let it put all the garbage in. Then download and install Drivermax, run the full driver backup and put it on a thumb drive. Then do your nlite install. Then install just the drivers you backed up using driver max. The result is all the drivers without all the junk software they install. (do you really need another utility to manage your wireless card? or Network card?) The only exception (there may be more) is if you want to install something like ATI's control panel, etc. I have found you don't need to and you can still manage your multiple monitors. Also, for all of you with Multiple Computers, with 2 sets of mice & keyboards on your trading desk, have a look at Synergy (1.3.1, it's gpl open sourced). It allows you to have as many PCs as you want, all from one of the PCs keyboard/mouse. So as I write this, I have 3 notebooks running. I can move the mouse to the left and it jumps onto the notebook on the left and then the same for the right. Then I have one monitor on each notebook, so I have 6 monitors on 3 notebooks. All controlled from a single mouse/kb. I find this better than 1 mambo PC because I can "dish" a strategy to compile on one of the notebooks, then test on another and program and then trade on the 3rd. So I can be highly active without having everything come crumbling down or have to restart strategies due to reboots, etc. As far as services, I don't use networking other than internet and I just manually create a host file with each PCs name and IP in it and I set my router to give the same IP address to each PC based on MAC address (but hard coded the ip address on the lan card and disabled DHCP to kill another service.) You will be amazed at how much faster your PC runs when you kill all the services relating to networking and just use your host file for resolution. Also, in your TCP settings on your lan and/or wifi card, KILL ALL THE WINDOWS NETWORKING CRAP, just run only TCP/IP (and maybe QoS, but I think that is a waste as well) Also, get Cacheset from MSFT's website and set it to be equal to 10% of your total memory and have it run on start up (you will need to create a .cmd file and add to your startup folder, don't bother with the scheduled task howto, it's not worth it and doesn't work well.) Here is a list of the only services running on my XP box. (also, get JKDefrag, it's fast and lean) Crypto Service DCOM S proc DNS Client Event Log Plug and Play Remote Proc Security Accts Windows Audio Windows Management You won't get that "autoplay" crap (when you insert a CD or the like, windows helps you by saying "what do you want to do" open/burn/blah blah or whatever.) You won't have lag due to all that networking crap. Just good old plain tcp/ip stack. Internet will work fine and your feeds will have less competition with netbios crap and windows trying to "find" network locations and crap for you. No broadcast packets clouding up your tcp stream. Get lean and setup your PC to trade." http://www.ninjatrader-support2.com/vb/showthread.php?t=16930