I play a lot off games on line, and I would like to know if I could have one startup in win xp home for say only games, meaning disabling any services are running programs that I would not use for gaming commiting all memory and pcu use to only gaming. Then have another start up for my regular use. Is this possible, if so, where do I get info on this?

That takes me back to the days when we rebooted to DOS for the same reason.
This can be done, and it's explained here:
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/xpprofiles.htm
Read it carefully, as there's a lot involved. You might be better off just disabling a few services and adding max memory to your computer.

That may not work well, and incurs considerable expense for a new OS.
USB drives will operate considerably slower, and certainly won't be suitable for games.
If you want to keep the kids out, XP has provided User Accounts for just that purpose.
Use a strong password for your own account, make the kids limited users.

That may not work well, and incurs considerable expense for a new OS.

no need to buy new os,as you are allowed to install a new hdd in you computer and use existing win os,same thing !!

USB drives will operate considerably slower, and certainly won't be suitable for games.

they aren't usb devices the one cage goes into a cdrom slot and connects to either ide or sata controller .then you put hdd's in the removal drawers,they have key to loch in ,just swith out one for the other.

If you want to keep the kids out, XP has provided User Accounts for just that purpose.
Use a strong password for your own account, make the kids limited users.

to much work for most adults ,you have to be there all the time ,to install programs for them and stuff like that ,and all other issues that need admin rights!!and the virus/spyware issues are greater for kids than most! adults .anyway that not his issue ,that just tidbit i added .

So basicaly, I need one hard drive to run my games, and one hard drive to run my regular stuff???? I hope I am not being difficult here. I will read the links that where left for me, but I will hold off on trying anything fancy because there seems to be a debate on what would be right or wrong going by the threads that where left for this topic. Hmmmm?.

So basicaly, I need one hard drive to run my games, and one hard drive to run my regular stuff????

in my opinion Yes!

So basicaly, I need one hard drive to run my games, and one hard drive to run my regular stuff????

No.
What you need is to figure out what services you need to disable, and can disable safely to free up memory.
This might be a matter of just a couple of mouse clicks in Task Manager, or you might need to set up hardware profiles as shown above.
Installing a new HD and a new OS is a much bigger job, and incurs unnecessary time and expense.
Before looking at HD caddys, if you decide to go that route, I'd check to see if you can install an internal HD and maybe dual-boot. That's getting even more complex for this very simple job.
As an aside, user accounts and limited rights are there just so the kids will need permission. As was pointed out, nobody can screw up a computer faster than a kid with an admin account, and the next thing you know, someone is making big bucks to disinfect the machine.

Mr. Hugh,
The viper web sight and about 6 hours of careful reading, step by step, I have made four hardware profiles, each to its own purpose. Wow, I just learned how to screw my brand new machine up!!!lol... I learned alot, but most important to any one who has an itch to try this, PLEASE, read every step and skip no lines and the reward is awsome!!!! Thank you all so much for helping me, One day I too will have more than a "0" for help solved threads.
Again, thanks to all, I am really fast now!!! Weeeeeee!!!

Well done. It's nice to hear from people who want to learn instead of having the answers fed to them.

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