My Windows 8 is almost as plain as it gets.
ASUS P8Z77 motherboard, Intel i3-3220, 16GB RAM, ATI HD7770, WD Velociraptor for Windows 8, WD Black for VMs.
Nothing installed on Windows 8 except Acrobat Reader, MS Office 2007, VMware Player, Windows Live Mail, WinZip.
I run all of my other apps on the computer within the VM's.
One of my VMs is a base Windows XP install, nothing but SP3 and all Windows Updates, so there is nothing in it to interact with any tests - still has distortion, as do the other two VMs.