Anything else I can clean out?

[antechinus]

I have just loaded up Sims2 on a new machine, and I want it to be as clean as I can get it. I have replaced all the templates with empty ones, removed all character, storytelling and thumbnail files, deleted the video files, made the objects.package files read only, changed the .exe to noCD and downloaded the director's cut. Is there anything else I need to do before playing?
I will be running it in a separate account. What processes can I safely kill?

[Theo]

There aren't that many processes you can kill on a clean windows install, but you can always stop unnecessary services, for a slight performance boost.

Here's a batch file I run before most games (in WindowsXP, obviously):

Code:

@ECHO OFF
REM Stopping non-essential services
net stop wuauserv
net stop W32Time
net stop Schedule
net stop ShellHWDetection
net stop ProtectedStorage
net stop Spooler
net stop dmadmin
net stop dmserver
net stop wscsvc

REM Stopping non-essential security services
net stop CryptSvc
net stop PolicyAgent
net stop seclogon
REM net stop SamSs

REM Stopping non-essential network services
net stop Browser
net stop lanmanserver
net stop TrkWks
net stop WZCSVC 

REM Stopping non-essential management services
net stop SENS
net stop EventSystem

Beware that although this script leaves internet access intact, it does stop file-sharing.

If you don't need net access during gameplay, you can run this second script:

Code:

@ECHO OFF
REM Stopping more services

net stop Dnscache
net stop LmHosts
net stop Nla
net stop RasAuto
net stop RasMan
net stop TapiSrv
net stop Dhcp
net stop WebClient

net stop lanmanworkstation

net stop PlugPlay
net stop FastUserSwitchingCompatibility