Ok heres the problem. I formatted my hdd and installed xp and when I installed ps I got this message when I opened it up:

You currently have Adobe Photoshop's primary Scratch and Windows' primary paging file on the same volume, which can result in reduced performance. It is recommended that you set Adobe Photoshop's primary Scratch volume to be on a different volume, preferably on a different physical drive.

I have 512 of sd ram and a 1.2GHz AMD processor and ps does seam to be running a lot slower then before. What can I do to fix this? Another hdd isn't out of the question if absolutely necessary, but im still not sure how I would set that up. Any way all your help is appreciated. Thanks

Retaw|wateR

Use another hdd for a scratch disk. You choose the scratch disk for ps in the preferences. Another possibility is to partition your existing drive and assign your ps scrath disk to the section xp is not running on HAWK999

Thanks for your help. I think i'll just get another hdd. I didn't know about that prefrences thing, thanks. I love how photoshop (and other graphics programs like 3Dsmax) always have new things to learn... the programers and dev team have done a really great job putting these software pacages together.

Edit/Preferences/Plug-ins & Scratch Disks That is where you adjust the settings. You can choose from up to four different drives Good luck