winxp uses 0.5 gb ram on startup

[just brew it!]

@vargis14: i got legal copy of winxp. i bought my thinkpad with os installed.

There's absolutely no good reason to not install SP3 then. As already noted, if you are still worried about breaking something make a backup image of the hard drive first. (FWIW the only thing I have ever seen break due to SP3 was some HP printer drivers.)

Getting back to your original question, I think we can summarize as follows:

1. The amount of RAM being used looks reasonable given the number of background services you are loading on startup.

2. If the system is slowing down when running your applications, you need to look at whether this is a RAM issue, CPU issue, or I/O issue. Use Task Manager (or Process Explorer) to figure out whether there's a particular process that is hogging the RAM and/or CPU. Does the hard drive light stay on continuously when the slowdowns occur, indicating an I/O bottleneck?

3. You've got multiple license servers running. Each one of these consumes system resources. Disable any that are for products you no longer use, or that you use only infrequently. You probably ought to ditch Advanced System Care 3 regardless.

I should also point out that there are some suspicious looking files on your system. Rpcapd.exe in particular is a packet sniffer, designed to snoop on network traffic. Unless you intentionally installed this for some reason (why?), I'd say odds are high that you've got a malware infection. Just one more reason that you NEED to install SP3 and run a full malware scan with something like Malwarebytes.

[Scrotos]

ok, i started this thread to get some knowledge of maintaining winxp. is that clear?

Then why aren't you listening to the many people telling you to upgrade to SP3 and IE8? There, there's your knowledge of maintaining WinXP. Yeah, it's wasting people's time who are trying to help you.

I concur with what people have already said and if you really want to keep riding that IBM pony, pony up to max out the RAM at least.

Actually, I'd back all of your stuff up and nuke the laptop from orbit. Use the system restore CDs that came with it. Or get a copy of WinXP and use the license key on the laptop itself to reinstall fresh (don't forget to download the drivers and store them somewhere off the computer FIRST). I've done that on literally over 10 OEM systems in the last month (5 IBM Netvistas and 5 Dell OptiPlexes) to prep them with a bare XP SP3 install and libreoffice and microsoft security essentials to give away. It's really not that hard as long as you've got your installers and serials backed up for reinstallation.