System Restore is commonly disabled for test systems or anyone who has a good automated deployment system. Now I’m wondering how likely it is that many engineers at Microsoft disabled it to save space or conserve every available IOP, especially in the era before large SSDs were widely available.
Do you have any good list of such actions?
Windows has never been about absolute best performance, but "good enough"; which sometimes isn't. Otherwise a default install wouldn't have so much stuff running.