Topic: Great free program for improving Windows music software performance
Just ran across this, and it works well with PianoTeq: The new version of Advanced System Care for Windows has a Gaming arrangement that basically just shuts down all of the services that aren't needed, including some that you might ordinarily not think to shut off. Much faster than shutting them off manually and maybe faster than setting up a separate profile and switching to it. It also optimizes the RAM.
In any case, on my system, it reduces the load PianoTeq places on the CPU by over half, even though I had several services already turned off.
Note that this is a new addition to Advanced System Care. I can't really suggest that you trust it absolutely, to the point of using it with a sequencer and several sample sets, but it seems to work fine for me so far.