Brian Livingston had an interesting article about the things that WinXP sends to MS when different programs run. Check this article out at InfoWorld.
Brian Livingston also discusses was to turn processes off on Win2K and WinXP. The article was in InfoWorld October 21, 02.
Brian Livingston does another great article on "parasites" and how to find them and rid your system of them. The article was in InfoWorld November 11, 02