How to Optimise for Speed & Control Services.

Hello forum people, I have a few questions that apply to use of software, and the whole cloud service setup thing. I had a hunt around before posting, please tell me if any of these are more appropriate for specific product forums.

I use CC Photography Plan and Adobe Acrobat pro. Windows 10 64 Pro, i5, ssd, 16gb ram and 4gb graphic ram. All system and software is up to date.

CC & System Processes

How to stop/fix/control gcclientservice?

Using a ridiculous amount of CPU. Adobe processes, whatever they all are, always take up the majority of the processes section of any performance reports. The reason that finally prompted me to post this was that following another system slowdown, windows performance monitor reported high cpu load, and on checking processes the adobeGCclient process accounted for 58.2% of that load. That is nuts. Adobe may have the right to check software is legitimate, but not to overwhelm my entire system doing so. I would prefer a legitimate fix, which is why I am here, but there is no shortage of 'how to turn it off' advice on the web.

How to identify all adobe services?

gcclient is the worst, but what are all the rest? what are they doing?  Does anybody have a reference link or better still info on how their effect on system resources can be minimised while still allowing the legal bits adobe require?

How can I have two active installs on one PC? And how to fix it?

My photography and acrobat plans allow me to have two active installs, two pcs, pc and laptop, whatever. However my adobe account info shows I have both active installs in use on one workstation. How can this be? The only difference is that one says '64bit' and one doesn't. If it has somehow got screwed up, how do i know which one to remove? i don't want to accidentally remove the one I am using and have to go all through the process of installing and setting everything up again. I went into an adobe support chat on this one, and unfortunately it just became a new entry in my top ten 'most pointless technical help sessions ever'. 

The next two questions may be better placed on the photoshop forum, but I will put them here first in case, as i suspect, the root cause of the first issue is one of cloud configuration.

Optimise for Speed

How to speed up photoshop, specifically file actions, open, save, copies etc?

I resisted the move from my old trusty CS3 master collection longer than most. There are of course some great new features in CC that I am glad to have, but its slower speed does still really grind my gears. I still have the old CS3 running on what is now an ancient PC, and it continues to make anything but huge saves instantaneously. You click 'save' and as fast as you can then click 'save as' it is ready to do so. But in CC, it is like the old days of a spinning hour glass, only a matter of a couple of seconds but I work with large quantities of files and it makes the job feel interminable. It also runs file saving macros much more slowly than the old CS3 too, if that helps identify the issue. The thing of it is that in terms of actions, for instance applying a big filter adjustment, the CC system is faster than the old CS3 - as it should be based on software vs hardware spec. It is only on these file saving and opening actions that cc is so annoyingly slow - which makes me wonder if it is some cloud function going on in the background. Some sync or report back to adobe to say what i'm opening and doing. If that is the case, whatever sort of babysitting or back up recovery is being undertaken on my behalf, I don't want it. I'm big and ugly enough to take care of myself. I don't think it is a file thing, acrobat opens anything blisteringly fast and undertakes all of its jobs far faster than the old system ever did.   

Updating & Protecting Desktop

How to ensure desktop does not get changed at update, or can be restored if it does?

This happened quite recently for the firat time. An update of photoshop and when i went back into the product all of my desktop layout settings etc had been removed. Is there a way to avoid this happening? or to keep a back up to be restored if it does? or minimally to be aware that this update will reset things, so you can choose when to do it?

That's quite a list of questions, any help with any of them much appreciated.

Thanks