When I was running Windows I was using BarelyClocked to OC the cards and cgminer to do the mining, loaded these from a batch script by using a timeout and then changed clocks with barelyclocked, then finally running cgminer with arguments, Also got my self a dyndns account and installed vnc server for remote administration...
Current cgminer does OC'ing for you so you only need a batch script to run cgminer with your clock values and thats all you need, no dummy plugs needed are needed as of 11.7 drivers.....
I just switched over to linux the other day but too much work setting up vnc to auto start on reboot, along with all the other crap configs needed... yeah I know Windows miner has the "N00b" label stuck on it, but in real life its faster and easyer to setup, if that makes me a n00b for not wanting to deal with the bullshit configs you need to do with linux then so be it, I'll be back on windows by tomorrow
P.s
If you need a hand with the batch scripts give me a yell and i'll show an example how to do it, you can also sett affinity using batch script