maybe (maybe not) I can help with the windows end. what's your pagefile settings (they should be roughly 1 1/2 time your physical memory), windows isn't that good at managing your pagefile so set it to a static size (so for 4gb pyhsical, that pagefile should be 6gb), also go to black vipers site, and lookup the services that you can disable or get the tweaked services settings (a downloadable reg file), this will configure your system so that the minimal amount of services are running.
in your processes, on a fresh build, your account should have around 20 odd (or less) processes running SVhost.exe being the most resource hungry, try disabling any antivirus (on access scanning) as it'll scan each file read/write.
if possible try putting your pagefile on a secondary drive away from the system drive, this will help load times as you'll use two SATA channels (one for file access, one for page file access) which should help performance.
*edit*
run MSConfig at run, select the Boot tab and "advanced options", tick the box that says "Number of Cores", god knows why, but windows desktop initially will only use the 1st core to boot windows, then it'll kick the other cores in as needed, this tweak tells windows to use ALL your cpu core from the off, and will speed booting abit
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like I say it may help, may not
