Windows Services

[MidnightCowboy]

There are various applications available on the internet (like XP Antispy) and tutorials dedicated to the "tweaking" and disabling of so called "un-necessary" Windows services. In my experience even with only a relatively modern machine there is no tangible benefit to be derived from messing around with these settings. On the contrary, there are so many if's, but's and maybe's associated with some of them they are best left alone! This type of "tweaking" is infectious so best not to get started in the first place! If your PC is slow then it's usually a virus, too many resource hogs (often combination security apps) or another system problem which won't be fixed by shutting down half of Windows! I proved this recently with a friendly doubter who had two hours on my own laptop (banned from viewing system services!) - one hour in "before" mode and one hour in "after". He actually told me correctly that the second session was on the "tweaked" system, but then immediately confessed that this was a guess because he couldn't tell the difference. In reality if you want to see a shorter startup list and then sit with a stopwatch to measure the differences then go ahead, but for the average guy you risk causing more problems than you will ever fix.
There is on the main site a contribution from a poster who mentions "dubious usefullness" as a category and I would certainly add these tweak tools into it along with system cleaners and memory optimizers.

[chris.p]

You're probably right geezer!

Only thing is, I would like to delete about half of Windows. Is this possible? I'm sure it would speed up my machine. I don't need about 50% of what is in there (80% if you're talking about Vista).



What I need is a guide called something like this:

"How to remove more than 50% of Windows and turn it into a blazing fast speed machine"
ps -- it will only open .txt files and browse online after this

Actually that would be pretty good for one of the office machines, at least it would boot fast.

[George]

I do not entirely agree with Cowboys assessment. I for my part achieved a considerable increase of speed and boot time by disabling services and autorun applications.

I agree though that it is more the boot time benefiting from such tweaking than runtime speed. There are also factors, like RAM size, that influence the effect of disabling services and TSRs (terminate and stay resident apps).

I specifically targeted services that were added by third party installations (Acronis, Asus, IBM) but also some of Windows (like Windows Defender).

I agree with Cowboy in the way that after disabling the major services and TSAs, further fine tuning is probably not worth the effort.

[jim]

I sort of agree with MC but the full articles on services and which to disable safely given on the websiste of BlackViper (http://www.blackviper.com/) gave me a lot better running on my XP system. Haven't tried on my current Vista system I must admit but I will do.

[Sope]

Originally Posted by chris.p

You're probably right geezer!

Only thing is, I would like to delete about half of Windows. Is this possible? I'm sure it would speed up my machine. I don't need about 50% of what is in there (80% if you're talking about Vista).



What I need is a guide called something like this:

"How to remove more than 50% of Windows and turn it into a blazing fast speed machine"
ps -- it will only open .txt files and browse online after this

Actually that would be pretty good for one of the office machines, at least it would boot fast.

In that case you might like this site then!
http://www.bold-fortune.com/forums/i...p?showforum=13

[MidnightCowboy]

You're all bonkers - if you want speed try Linux DSL or Zenwalk. Just think how upset Bill Gates would be if he knew you wanted to chuck half his lifetimes work into the bin. It's like going into Harrods, buying a suit then going to work in your underpants!

[jim]

I appreciate what you say MC but if, like me, you bought a system over the counter which suited your particular needs and pocket but has a lot of things running which you know you will NEVER use or need, then what is wrong with throwing them out if it improves speed and reliability? It's a bit like that junk in the boot of your car. They just take up space and use up petrol. Windows comes with lots of things by default to cover all, but not all are needed by all.

[J_L]

Tried some of these guides, and I did get some more free RAM out of this at least (but I had to make some of my own modifications to make everything perfect).
As for their usefulness, it depends on the user, but some services are definitely best left disabled because of how dangerous (and/or useless) they are.

[wdhpr]

Its a matter of when not if!

[Phobos]

I've been tweaking the services for years, and although it may not be for the average person, it can save quite a bit of valuable ram on an old comp. I spent the last 8 years beating performance out of my pentium 4 and it runs better than any P4 that I've seen. There are many services running automatically by default that are just unnecessary for most home users, like any service for using the comp on a network. Remote registry is simply a dangerous service that should be disabled in every comp. Some services I enable as I need them, like print spooler, but that is a bit extreme for just about anyone. I also write batch files to start services and the application that needs them, compile them into an .exe and point the shortcut to that. This saves 20 megs of ram constantly used by my defrag program alone and all these things add up. My P4 with XP Pro SP3 starts up and runs very smooth and functional on 90mb of ram, not many can say that. Shutting down unnecessary services also solves most ram leak problems. Turn on your comp, check the ram usage then walk away for 12 hours and see what it does. It can be shocking to see a comp start on 125mb and leak to 600mb of ram when it's done nothing but start and idle all day.
I just built a new AMD 3.0ghz quad core system and I still tweak some of the services, but this thing can handle a lot!