There is a great utility called ENDITALL that I always run before doing editing. This kiils all backgroud apps like antivirus, printer agents and so on. Just a warning, if you ENDITALL by killing all background apps and enter the Internet you might just get a virus.
Your performance issue might also be your render-temp files which should be on a diffrent drive and not on the same drive as your Windows default pagefile which usually is your C drive.
Tell me something, have you got your “Hyper Threading” on or off?
Craig