I shall, I hope, shortly take delivery of a new Win XP SP2 PC; my first with XP (I currently use Win2K), which is pre-installed.

What are the first things people would advise me to do, before installing apps and using my PC? Other than the obvious virus checker and similar security matters!

I want to set up separate profile for myself, and other user, and my "admin" alter ego, as I understand that it's more secure not to use a profile with administrator privileges for day-to-day working. How?

Also, I want to make a couple of partitions on the 300 Gig ;-) hard drive - how do I do that?

XP looks a little different, but you can go to "Classic View" from Start>Settings>Taskbar and Start Menu. If you like the new look, no prob.

There is a "Users" icon in control panel that will walk you through setting up users.

Your pc will probably ship with an AV program installed. I would get a 3rd party firewall and use that instead of XP's. Just make sure you update the AV right away. It will probably be very out of date.

Partitioning a drive that already has stuff on it is a little risky. You can try a program like Acronis Partition Expert. (I have heard bad things about the newer versions of partiton magic). Be careful!

Will you have an actual windows cd or a recovery cd? If you have a recovery cd, be very careful. There will probably be a hidden recovery partition. If you mess up that partition, you will not be able to do a restore without contacting the mfr.