12-25-2025, 03:50 AM
I'm a freelance video editor working on a three-year-old Windows 11 desktop with a Ryzen 7 and 32GB of RAM, and my system has become noticeably sluggish during editing, with long project load times and choppy preview playback. I've run disk cleanup and defragmented my drives, but the issue persists. I suspect background processes and Windows services are hogging resources. What are the most effective, non-destructive steps for Windows performance optimization for a creative workflow? I'm looking for specific services to disable, registry tweaks that are actually safe, and recommendations for lightweight third-party utilities that genuinely help manage startup items and system monitoring without adding more bloat.