<< I have seen several posts in the past about WinME that say System Restore=bloat and will slow your system down. I am running XP Pro and decided to benchmark it both ways to find out. With 3Dmark2001 SE and PCMark2002 I did not gain any additional performance from disabling System Restore. As far as I can tell it just takes up disk space, but doesn't affect performance.
I don't know about Active Desktop. >>
If you're not creating a restore point during the benchmark then you won't notice the difference. Trust me, it does slow the system down. During the me beta program (I'm a real tester), I put together numbers for M$.