My XP Home seems to be running smoother (and faster) the last few days without me doing anything. Can XP Home repair itself (or learn new file locations after a defrag)? I'm enabled for automatic Windows updates.

I doubt that it can repair itself but it is constantly doing housekeeping. It compresses and deletes rarely used system modules and deletes temporary files.

I would like to see a system that would continually match its modules with the originals to see if unauthorized modifications by a virus have been made.

I recently installed a Kensington mouse on my laptop. It works great but it deleted the module controlling the touchpad. I had to reinstall it and they both seem to get along now. Too bad the operating system couldn't alert me that a critical module was being deleted.