I do not agree with Sweetwater.
"1. This helps alleviate poor hard drive performance. In Device Manager open the Disk Drives menu.
2. For all of your hard drives, right click on the drive name and select Properties
3. Go to the Policies tab and check the boxes to “Enable write caching” and “Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing”"
Well, if you ever lose power and you do not have an un-interruptible power supply, data will be scrambled on the hard disk if working on something using the hard disk and the power goes off. (not a controlled shut-down of the computer).
" Go to the Startup Tab and choose ‘disable all’ in the bottom right corner.
** NOTE: after doing this Pro Tools users must check the box for “Digidesign MME Binder”**
3. Next, navigate to the Services tab. Check the box at the bottom to “hide all Microsoft Services”
4. Choose “Disable All” on the bottom right corner. **NOTE: Pro Tools users must check the boxes for “Digidesign MME Refresh Service”, “digiSPTIService” and “PACE License Services”"
Well, you do not have to disable all services or processes in Control Panel -> Adminstrative Tools -> System Configuration. There you can decide what to start up even using a Selective Startup on the General Tab after
unchecking what you do not want to start up on boot-up of the computer. You also have Safe Boot on the Boot Tab but that usually is not needed. Services and Startup is where you uncheck what you do not want to start up when the computer starts. Not all of that has to be unchecked and you would not probably want to.
"We recommend AVG or Microsoft Security Center."
I do not recommend AVG and use Avira which can be turned-off with the real-time protection if wanting to disable it while playing a game or recording music - in which case on my computer it does not interfere at all. AVG can not be turned off and disabled with the later versions.
Be smart and only do what needs to be done, a little more memory not starting up start-up programs when the computer boots are usually only programs that may look for an update, and that also can be set when the program updates and set just to notify you so you can do the update when you want to, and like Windows Update, turn it off and do it manually when you want to - because the second Tuesday of the month is when Microsoft usually has updates for the OS and whatever else it puts on your computer.
Other start-up programs only seem to make the computer faster like Office startup or the herd that followed Microsoft doing that in the first place and well those do not have to be started up when the computer starts, and only take a few seconds more to start the program at any time if you even use the program that much on the computer in the first and last place.
Well, there may be some other stuff but mainly that is it, and use common sense or set up safe boot on the Boot Tab and use Minimal Boot if you want to try any of that, but Selective Startup should show up on the General Tab of the System Configuration in the Adminstrative Tools in Control Panel. The rest is looking through your computer and knowing what all those Control Panel Icons are for and how to change your computer to the way that you want to use it.