I’ve been using Vista on my PC as of late and it’s just not as fast as a well configured XP setup. So, I’m going to do a reinstallation of XP Professional and list all the steps involved. First I backup all documents, settings, bookmarks, contacts and accounts. Then deactivate and transfer all software licenses and check my email 1 last time.
Now we’re ready for a low level format. I reboot into a live linux distro to reformat the disk writing 1s and 0s over the boot sector of the hard drives. I also check the disk for errors, making sure they run like a top.
Time to set up the Raid Arrays. There are 4 SATA disks in this setup. 2 WD 36gb 10k rpm Raptors and 2 Samsung 500gb 16mb cache. The os is on a Raid1 mirror of only 34.5gb, while the documents will reside in a Raid0 striped array totaling 931.5gb. This is all done through the onboard intel raid controller.
I am installing Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 on this pc. The installation is pretty straight forward, istalling the additional raid driver at the beginning of the installation. After loading the driver. I create the partition and install the OS on the mirrored raid1 array. Setup the OS and install 77+ critical windows updates…
After Defragmenting the hard drives, I begin installing the software. Adobe Flex, Flash, Flashpaper, Quicktime Pro, Flash Video updater, Photoshop etc…
Now that the system is all updated I can rely on it for at least a couple months 
