More on Vista disc thrashing

[xoggoth]

Some problems are due to updates, with trustedinstaller frequently running.
It seems there is a thing called taskscheduler, access it via help. Check it out on every user because it only shows local tasks.

You may find like I did that there are tasks scheduled to update software you thought you'd uninstalled yonks ago or current software where there is no indication on the panel that it auto updates.

Can't seem to remove inessential MS ones like mcupdate or the Google update but you can make the latter fail by deleting the obvious file in windows/tasks.

Also from IE tools remove live feeds updating if you don't use them. (Although that doesn't seem to work either on mine). I believe other browsers have similar.

[DSW]

I had some problems with ngen (.net framework optimizer for .net 2 and 4) on windows 7 using up all the memory and grinding the disk, so I just turned the service off. I also had problem with msiexec which also stopped you installing stuff, I had to remove a registry key to fix that.

On vista I found Superfetch is quite good for thrashing the disk as well, so that went in the bin!

I've turned a load of other things off as well including aero and theme manager - so now it looks more like win2003, but is pretty fast and a bit more lightweight - to the point that I'm actually pretty happy with it!

I should also mention that I dont have much on the main laptop - just ooo and generally work stuff. All the cool stuff is in VM's - on my laptop at least.

[xoggoth]

Just an update to this. Dont know why I said you can't remove MS progs, just double click on name in the lower active tasks window, then action/disable. There are some tasks you may not need:-

consolidator & optinnotification - MS gathers usage data if you signed up for some user experience thing. I don't remember doing so but they were active.

Reminders - if you don't actually use pop up reminders or calendar.

TMM - for multi monitor/mobile users

mcupdate - (probably) if you don't care about media player updates, I have left this one.

PS Quite how you turn any on again if you need to I am not sure but there must be a way.