>> The indexing service I switched off only today because we just don't need that.
You might want to reconsider that. All the search functionality - for the file system, media and the start menu is all tied to the indexing engine. The indexing engine gives you quick access to anything in the system including content in documents. It'd be kinda silly to turn this off as this is one of the core features of Vista. Search may still work but won't be as fast or complete.
The engine will use a bit of disk activity once it creates the first index but after that indexing overhead is minimal...
+++ Rick ---