Short term memory is quite good, but nowhere near photographic. Only in the past few months have I ever used tools other than task manager and process hacker. I had two weeks without internet recently and decided to see how much I could learn from what Windows comes with. Knowing sizes and shit is only useful in the event you have a worm stubbing itself into a million different files, but the services on my PC got drilled into my head after I tried to figure out why the fuck I had bluetooth still running.
The rootkitting part was when I got "explorer.exe" on my pc. The shit virus was stubbed into the legit windows version, and I decided to teach a skid a lesson. I don't use a VPN or proxy for that matter, so maybe one day when I get a faster speed with a reliable ping I can show you.
(I'm cautious as fuck when it comes to the programs on my computer, and it can really be a pest to be so frantic when a new process is running or I notice an attempted outbound connection)
You seem like the kind of Whitehat person I would like to know, so maybe one day I can get in touch with you.