Geek4ever

Check out this great little article What slows Windows down.

All the usual suspects are there, though its great to have actual numbers on just what programs are doing to your pc.

Personally, I would like a way to segment your system, so you can have a profile for the usual stuff running, and another one that is optimised for performance such as playing games. Sure you can do a bit of this with different user accounts, but so much stuff gets installed as a system service its a real pain.

Even a program you can run that takes your machine to an all clear mode that is like a first install with no registry bloat etc and no auto loading programs would be a great feature, sure system restore does a bit of this, but once again not enough.