The first suggestion is a good one. As much RAM as possible is always a good move. Unfortunately laptop RAM can be more expensive than the ones used on desktops, but the benefits go a long way. I think these days you should aim to have at least 1GB on your machine to start with.

Next, look at your system tray... All those icons! Do you really need them? If you have there an icon for a program you don't use, or you can start it any time from the Start | Programs menu, then do yourself a favour, and

a) remove the program (if not used) or
b) change its configuration to not load on startup or
c) at least not to show the icon in the system tray

Next your best bet is to open the Control Panel and check the Add/Remove Programs. If there's any program in the list that is never used, remove it. Chances are that a few of these have some startup option so you will reduce the number of programs using memory from the start.

Now you need to look at your Startup folder. See any program you are sure you installed and you are sure you don't need on start? Remove it.

Now you need to run MSCONFIG and check what runs. It's getting more difficult. Simply using Google to search for a program's name should give you an idea of what it is and if it's essential or not. Same for the list of active processes. Google the process name, there are lots of sites around that list process names versus what it does. You can then decide how important it is.

It's really hard for anyone else to say what to remove, since each PC is individual as its owner...

tonyhughes: You have a reasonable amount of ram (512MB with 64MB being used by your on board graphics card).

You can screen shot anything by pressing PrtScn (should be on the top row of keys), now your screen shot is on the clipboard. I then paste it into Powerpoint or Publisher, and right click the resulting pic, and click "save as" (yes Geeks, its clunky, but it works, and its one less program i need installed...).

If you email the pic to tony.hughes at this sites domain, I will post it on this thread.

Empty out things in START > All Programs > Startup that you dont think you need (actually just cut and paste the icons to your desktop, so you can put them back if need be.

Go to control panel, and add/remove programs. Remove everything that you have knowingly installed, but havent used for at least say, 3 months. Be ruthless, you can always re-install later if you need to use something. Once most of this stuff is gone, as long as you use up to date spyware and virus software (use MS Antispyware and Avast if you dont have anything installed), you probably wont need to worry about background processes.

Dont download and run any RAM free-ers or RAM optimisers. Although some can provide extremely MINOR gains, most of it is snake-oil packaged with spyware.

Defrag your hard drive. Often.

If you run things like Google Desktop or MSN desktop, Picasa, blah blah blah, consider disabling these programs ability to always monitor your system for changes. This eats up resources.

How many IM programs are you running? Could you ditch ICQ, AOL, and GoogleTalk in favour of GAIM which handles all three (and therefore free up more RAM).

196MB free ram on an XP system with 512MB sounds normal to me. If you would like more, im picking the best way for you to achieve that, is to buy some more physical ram.

This is probably what you would need to double your RAM and extend the useful life of your lappy, though we would need your laptop model to confirm. DSE may install this for you (they did mine for free in Napier some time ago).

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need further info.