Ok, OldasDirt, about the part with not many people using NTFS patritions...... that's cause most people/retailers don't really know about it. I bought my Sony computer which came with a default of 2 partitions...... the partition that Windows XP was installed on was FAT32 and the other was NTFS!!! that's pretty screwy to begin with.
Second point. the part about XP corrupting itself when you restart. that ....could.... have been either something that was installed that corrupted it, or it could have been a bad installation of XP. Actually, it could have probably been a bunch of different things. If you have an actual Windows XP cd, you can boot from that as if you were going to re-install it, and use ASR (Automatic System Recovery) which would most likely fix it just the same as what you do does.
And yes, XP does perform better on NTFS. Maybe not in EVERY aspect of the OS, but booting goes a bit faster, and it also seems to take longer amount of time until the drive has to be Defragged. not sure about the last part, but seems like it.