I voted with
other, which is to
manually remove unnecessary services etc to remove wasted resources and clock cycles. Did this a while back with a Windows XP computer using BlackViper's info here:
http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-windows-xp-x86-32-bit-service-pack-3-service-configurations/ And then created a ghost image of this system after going through this as a clean optimized baseline for my prior gaming rig.
After all, a clean installation of Windows is what services etc, Microsoft Believes you need, and there are features you probably dont need that are enabled that can be dumped from automatic service start to optimize a system.
Newer systems will probably not see much of a gain from removing unnecessary common Windows services, but the single-core Athlon XP 2800+ 2.08Ghz I was running saw a good gain removing unnecessary services and remving the bloatware that came with the Compaq from factory. I transformed the XP installation from clutter of unneeded services and programs to as clean and optimized as can be without removing important services etc. I also saw a great gain in performance by running this system without Norton Antivirus on it. I installed a removable HD bay and made an 80GB optimized drive and then used the sytem recovery CD's to make a 40GB drive to build as factory with antivirus running etc which didnt need to be optimized, but needed to be secure. Would swap hard drives and boot system up for whatever purpose I needed, 40GB for slow and secure, or 80GB for fast and at risk only if I downloaded anything without testing it first from the 40GB build. *Never got infected and the system ran nice and fast on that 80GB that was clean as could be.
A long time ago I used Norton System Works and it caused problems on my systems registry. Since then if I want to optimize my system, I will manually do it, and create a registry backup copy first before making any large changes that are not as simple as flipping a 1 to a 0 etc.
Poll