Idea for A Cleaner Way to Manage TSRs

It's ridiculous how Windows PCs suffer from the computer equivalent of COPD. Our home computer has reached the advanced stage, where it is still useable, but decidedly unpleasant. I will soon need to re-install the O/S.

One contributor to the degenerative "cruft" is all the stuff that wants to automatically load any time you boot up. This stuff can be divided into categories such as:
1. Enhanced drivers, like for printers.
2. Updaters--like Adobe, and various software. Those really seem like a waste.
3. Event handlers, like software for burning CDs.

It seems like Windows could have a unified model for registering these handlers. So for categories 1 and 3, the driver registers the events it wants to respond to. When those events occur, Windows either starts the utility, or gives the user a choice of selecting which utility to start and use. Similar to the way Windows responds when you insert a memory card with JPGs on it. For category 2, just set a frequency to run any given updater--there is absolutely no reason to have that updater sitting in memory at all times.

Advanced features

• Let the user specify which things really should load all the time, for truly important utilities. Needless to say, the user can opt out of that setting with a simple un-check.