best way to setup 2 head vid card for editing?

[jaybird]

I was not sure where to post these two questions so I put them here

#1: Best way to setup dual head card for editing?

I use a Matrox dual head vid card in my video editing box. It is presently in stretch mode. However, Matrox tells me that I can only Gamma correct in the primary monitor. I like stretch mode because I can stretch VirtualDUB's dual screen output across both monitors but I am having issues (can you say video related crashes? ) in doing this.

#2: Best OS (Windowz only please )

I am presently using 98SE/2000 Pro, dual boot. However, Matrox 2000 drivers don't like my Via Apollo Pro 133 chipset and my Creative SBLive Platinum 5.1 system doesn't lik 2000 Pro!

My system said "enough of this " last night and it crashed so I said "to h--l with this" and did a low level format on the primary drive.

I have XP Pro but have not used it because I have been told that it is full of "stuff" that I'll never use and just takes up space.

I know, long winded, sorry

Please advise!

Regards,

jaybird

[reboot]

Install XP Pro, then tweak as needed.
You can easily turn off all the stuff you don't want.
Graphics stuff is turned off through the typical Display control panel, and services through "services.msc", as well as other stuff in "gpedit.msc" (careful editing the group policy stuff!).
You can pare it down to about the same size (on disk) as a full Win98 install.