Stripped windows version.

Tanant · November 21, 2013, 1:54pm

Rhino:

Ime 3rd party stuff makes the biggest difference.
Only install the bare minimum, make sure to uncheck all options you don’t explicitly need, especially the moronic auto-updaters everything installs these days (some, like Java or Adobe are almost like trojans ).
There are tips on the web how to permanently disable all that crap.
Toolbars, no comment.
Try to find the leanest drivers (often the included Win drivers), not the newest bloatware (e.g. VGA, printer, onboard sound, mice etc), any small VGA will do for a DAW and use less resources, put the monster gaming card elsewhere.
Disable all 3rd party processes you don’t absolutely need, like tray apps, office quickstart etc.
Games, only when they definitely don’t come with rootkits a la Steam & Co, no resident background processes, always better to have another machine for that.
And, while unpopular, the biggest performance- and stability difference by far makes an offline system.
Nobody in his right mind would go online without realtime protection, antivirus, firewall etc, plus all those handy little “nice to have” online tools - there you have it, a shortlist of all the most intrusive and unpredictable troublemakers, none of which are needed by a DAW.
Used PCs are a dime a dozen, get one of those for surfing, gaming, whatever - and, obviously, for scanning all media coming from outside before transferring them to the DAW, no need for another Natanz …
ymmv,
Rhino

I have a dual Win 7 boot system, one is online and has all the ‘crap’, the other never sees an internet connection at all, except to activate some software, in which case I have to enable a few services and devices.

Just another option to throw out there. You lose around 8gb for the second install though.