Do you have a lot of icons in your systray (lower right corner of the screen)?
Then you need to clean up your memory by removing some loads from your "START, Programs, Startup" menu. As well as checking your registry.
In Windows 2000 (or Windows 95
)
run: "rededit"
From [regedit], you'll go into the following:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
..SOFTWARE
....MICROSOFT
......WINDOWS
........CURRENTVERSION
..........RUN
From the run listing [and sometimes "runservices"] you can see what programs are being executed on loadup, which will cause that and/or other programs to load into memory, often causing a bog on your system resources. You can often tell what the program is by the directory from which it is loaded. For the trickier programs you may want to do a google search for the file name to see what it is for before you go removing it and causing havok on your system.
Just to forewarn, the registry can be a dangerous place to go deleting things. Perhaps you will want to post the file names and the specs of all attached peripherals if you feel uncomfortable winging it, and we TIMOers can help you identify the dangers in removing it.
In other Windows:
Simply run "msconfig" from the run box. There you can edit the "RUN" values of your registry from the "Startup" tab. This is much nicer as it allows easy restoration of programs that caused undesired results upon their removal.
Things you can remove include display adapter programs (so long as you don't use anything out of the ordinary such as dual display management), messenger services (though sometimes these will restore their registry key if you don't go into the program itself and remove it's option for loading on Windows startup), adware, peripheral programs (such as printer/scanner stuff...these more often than not can be removed without loosing any functionality, but sometimes they will effect some of the devices functions, in which case you'll want to reinstall the devices' software), and tons more. I don't know who started the fad, but it's become insane. So many programs that are installed or even just run want a place in your taskbar, even when there is absolutely no reason whatesoever for it to be running in the background.