This is what I call "the demo problem" because I feel like some of the whiz-bang features that we find in modern operating systems are there purely to look cool, to make the system look good when someone's watching what you're doing. I mean, really, do we need three different kind of window-open-zoom features?

What's nice with Windows XP is that it's relatively straightforward to turn this feature off, though WinXP has the problem of whether you use "classic" or "new" mode with your Start Menu. I'll show both.

First, off, click on Start --> Control Panels and if you're using the newer view, you'll see this:

You want to click on "Performance and Maintenance" and now you'll see:

Click on "Adjust visual effects" and ...

Oh, wait, I want to show you the classic path there first:

Now click on the "System" icon then on the "Advanced" tab and:

Jeez, it's still complex, but don't panic, you want to simply choose "Settings" under "Performance" (as shown) and you'll end up in the same place:

However you've gotten here, you can see that you just need to choose "best performance" and just about all the visual effects should be disabled and, hopefully, your computer will go a bit faster.