How to boot with the least amount of processes, but not in Safe Mode??

So I seem to normally have about 65-70 processes (lots I feel are from McAfee) running on a normal boot, which I feel is pretty high. I try to only install and run programs that I need, but I'm sure there are some in there I don't use/need (a secondary question would be how can I easily find out what is not needed?? another post here with a screen shot??)

Anyways....I need to run a cpu and graphics intensive program (MS FlightSimulator) and I'd like to boot up with the least amount of running processes so I can get max performance while running FlightSim. I know I can boot into SafeMode, but then I'd lose my graphics support which is kinda important.

Is there an easy way to boot up with minimal running processes??

Thank you

 

You could disable some MS services.

http://smallvoid.com/articles/windows-xp/services/

Note: This is for XP.
A screen shot would help.

 

Type msconfig in Run, you can disable startup programs from there.

 

For the moment I'm running Vista Home Premium.
The total amount of processes running is 43 when I boot up the said OS.
I'd love to remove even more of those processes if possible, but I've also already tweaked the OS and disabled plenty of unnecessary programs to begin with, so I'm not sure what to disable next.

Eh ... I think this will do fine until I put Windows 7 on the computer.

 

i think 43 is a very very small amount for Vista..