You gotto get it the way you like it, then pour couple of quarts of crazy glue on it, so it maintains posture.

I had good amount of success with CCleaner. It does a few things very well

1) it cleans most of leftovers from uninstalls and conflicts in registry, letting you make a copy of whole thing before it does it, so if something goes bananas you have a way home.
2)Lets you uninstall bunch of persistent apps that are not easily removable by normal means (add remove programs)
3)Selective service startup

And whole bunch of other useful things, like duplicate finder for example.
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The issue with programs like latencymon is that you find your "monster" and it turns out to be a system item and there is no way to stop it. Another approach that some DAWs had for years is called Load Balancing, where it tries to spread the load (of VSTs and such) through available CPU cores, but I hardly noticed difference when using it. Was experimenting with a few setups, monitoring CPU cores and it seems that when working in DAW only one core takes most of the heat and will spike if pushed slightly higher, instead of moving pressure to other cores.

What I think another major factor when it comes to "clicks and pops" is a properly written interface ASIO driver. No matter how well you cut the fat of your PC, if the driver is a booger, you will definitely get your dose of clicks and pops.

I see that a good number of people here use Focusrite. As far as I know, they have one of the best written drivers around... the newer ones. I was an inch from getting one, but than decided on a competitor, specifically because of distortion under load in one of my interfaces, which will go right out of the door when newborn interface arrives.

Strangely, I tested 3 interfaces on the same project/same computer this is what I got with highest buffer on each:

10+ year old Yeti Pro, almost no pops (unfortunately it is not a true interface, but acts as an ASIO sound card)
5+ year old Arturia Audiofuse, my main interface. Excellent mic preamps.... Minor occasional pops.
-1 year old Apogee One - Total nightmare. Would trip on just light VST load. Also has driver issues with BIAB.

my reply turned out to be a lite version of War and Peace smile

P.S. Kevin, nice find! Too bad Microsoft decided to block it. In general Mr. Nadella is long due for heavy spanking for ignoring music enthusiasts.