cool thanks for the counting the pins tip, will def help him locate the correct memory.

and uhm about the hard drives.. they are real physical drives. i do not like using virtual cd, or any drive emulators to create drives. 
c: [Samsung]
e: [Seagate]
f: [western digital]

and cool about leaving the virtual settings alone..think I will lol..surely will alow xp to manage it.