w7 and xp , which services did you shut down?

Yep.

I expect everyone here assumes you are an advanced user and I'm sure you are very happy with your setup. That post really wasn't as much for you as for the people that have no idea what they are doing, like the guy we let go (not entirely for that by any means) that pulls up some service tweaking guide and proceed to follow it without an understanding of the consequences.

 

I just think it's important that if there are readers of this topic they understand that there are legitimate benefits to turning a service off.

No one should be messing with services without research first. The nice thing about BlackViper's guide to disabling services is that it provides loads of information on each one.

 

ATK Keyboard Service
Help and Support
Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Portable Media Serial Number Service
Telnet
RemoteRegistry
SysmonLog
NetDDE
NetDDEdsdm
upnphost
Spooler
LmHosts
HidServ
ClipSrv
ERSvc
Alerter
SSDPSRV
Messenger
NtLmSsp

Windows XP

 

i use xp-antispy
suggests turning off unnecessary services easy to turn back on but as yet haven't needed to been using it for a couple of years now

 

I wonder, why do people who don't know a thing about such things need a warning? If they don't know what it is, you would think they should tread lightly.

For example, have you ever met someone who took apart a lawnmower motor or some electronic device, and once they got a good ways through, they discovered they had no idea what they were doing, and it either sat like that or they paid someone to fix it? lol, I have seen that a few times.

I have always thought it should be obvious to a person what they were capable of, or not capable of. But, as you point out, and maybe it is especially bad with computers, people really do dive in to things they should not be. Strange how that works.

You know, "Don't shoot the messenger" should apply for tweak information too

Sul.

 

The issue is that most people know they don't know anything about lawn mowers.

Lots of people "know" they know a lot about computers - when in fact they don't know a lot at all. I'd say that's really a large majority of "power users."

Still, that doesn't mean the information shouldn't be out there. If it weren't I never would have learned.

 

There is no point in debating the practical benefit of disabling services. Saved RAM/CPU cycles/security aspects, etc. in itself are not important. I could care less if I saved a MB of RAM by disabling some stuff (I have 12 GB of it). It is simply a matter of principle, a case of not running a specific piece of resident code that serves no purpose on a specific PC. To me, it is just as simple as that, always was and always will be, and a single reason why I'll always encourage tweaking services.

That being said, I still didn't tweak my Win7 services. A couple of most obviously unneeded ones are changed from default state to 'disabled', but I know I'd have to delve deep into the technical docs to do more than that. I remember doing it on XP took quite some time, and I guess I just didn't find the time to do the same for Win 7 yet.

 

Services - Disabling

Myth - "Disabling certain Services improves performance."
Reality - "Disabling certain Services actually reduces performance."

DNS Client Service - "The overall performance of the client computer decreases
and the network traffic for DNS queries increases if the DNS resolver cache is deactivated.
This effectively reduces Internet Performance for sites you have previously visited and puts
an unnecessary load on your ISP's DNS server."

Task Scheduler Service - "Disabling the Task Scheduler completely cripples Windows XP's Boot
and Application Load times by preventing Prefetch (.PF) trace files and the Layout.ini file from
being created or updated."

Notes - Disabling other unnecessary services in general has only one effect on performance
and that is reduced Windows XP boot times.

XP Myths - Optimization

Code:

For example, when I walked into a new job four years ago, one of the  first problems
I was asked to investigate was why none of the servers  were dynamically
registering their DNS information.
Every single one of  the desktop machines was registered,
but not a single system in the  server room was registered.
After about two minutes of looking at one  of the problem systems,
I realized that the DHCP client service was  disabled.
A quick check on a couple of other systems confirmed that
all of them had that service set to disabled via GPO.
The fix of course, was relatively simple – but of course the requisite (finger-pointing)
post-mortem revealed that none of the admins really knew what the DHCP  Client service did. 
They had fallen into the common trap of thinking  that DHCP was just for handing out
IP Addresses to client machines.
Since the servers all had static IP addresses,
they assumed that the  DHCP Client service was “unnecessary” and disabled it 

Code:

Recently we had a customer ask us “what services can safely be  disabled”. 
In this particular instance he was trying to create a  standard configuration
for his desktop systems and wanted to know if we  could give him
“the absolute minimum set” of services that needed to  stay running
so he could optimize the system performance of his client  computers. 
The short answer was that[B]
[/B][B]we don’t really test various service configuration combinations
outside of what is enabled by default out of the box[/B].
The reason for this is that [U]services sometimes perform secondary functions[/U]. 

A classic example of this is the Spooler Service.
We all know that the primary function of the spooler service  is to
handle print spooling and processing.
However – on a domain  controller, the installation of the DC role adds a thread to the
spooler  service that is responsible for performing print pruning –
removing the  stale print queue objects from the Active Directory. 
If the spooler  service is not running on at least one DC in each site,
then the AD has  no means to remove old queues that no longer exist.
So, the moral  of the story is that while there are opportunities for tuning
by turning off services to decrease the overhead –
you have to know everything that the service does,
lest your good intentions have dire  consequences.

Disabling Unnecessary Services? A Word to the Wise

 

When it is not their machine to tweak to begin with. If it's your machine have fun and tweak away. When you have some idiot pulling up some tweak website and disabling services on one of your servers when he does not know what he is doing and it becomes your job to fix it then in this case I think a warning up front is better than the one he got for messing with a company machine.

Thank you, this is exactly one of the things he did.

 

Only a few.

ActiveX Installer.
Application layer.
Bitlocker Drive Encryption.
Bluetooth support.
Credential manager.
Diagnostic policy.
Diagnostic Service.
Encryption file service.
Fax.
Function Discovery
Health Key.
Human Interface.
Inter Active Service.
Ip Helper.
Link Layer.
Microsoft iSCSI.
Net TCP Port Sharing.
Net Logon.
Net Access Protection Agent.
Parental Controls.
Peer name Resolution.
Peer Networking.
Peer Identity.
Pnp-X IP Bus enumerator.
PNRP Machine.
Portable Device Enumerator.
Problem Reports.
Program compatibility.
Quality windows Audio-Video experience.
Remote Desktop Configuration.
Remote Desktop Services.
Remote Procesdure Call Rpc Locator.
Remote Registry.
Routing and Remote Access.
Table PC Input.
TPM Base Services.
Windows Biometric Service.
Windows Card Space.
Windows color System.
Windows Connect Now.
Windows Error Reporting.
Windows Live Mesh.
Windows Media Player Networking sharing.
Windows Remote Management.
Windows Search.
Win HTTR Wen Proxy.

 

@djohn what OS are you running that you disabled those services on? if on windows 7 most of those services dont need touching since they are already set as manual and will only start if they are needed for example bitlocker,fax,parental controls. there are plenty more like that but im not gonna list them all. also if you dont use windows live mesh you may as well uninstall it rather than disabling the service.

 

Windows 7,Thats true that most are already set in manual but I prefer to just have them Disabled.As far as unistalling a service I may want to use latter,its best to just leave it there.

 

I use Blackviper's work on this matter for XP and Windows 7.

http://www.blackviper.com/

The main one I disable is MS update so I can wait a bit on their updates.

Let others find the errors first! (selfish I know)

If you guys decide to use his advice go real SLOW if you don't know what you are doing. Take a full image of your working setup before you start!

Start by going to all default settings reboot then try his safe setting one by one rebooting as you go.

I'm not going to list mine here as they are not relevant to your settups.

 

Well, that is not what I have seen with my own eyes, so maybe my reality is skewed Maybe the key word there is certain services.

That is so true, and not just limited to services.

That is a sad story. I cannot personally see why anyone would do that without both permission and some research to see just what the ramifications would be.

I really have to wonder just what sort of warning would be beneficial for such a person. If you don't know, then you don't know, warning or not.

Services should be left alone if you aren't ready to learn, and possibly learn the hard way. However, contrary to what any paper or individual might tell me, I have seen myself how they COULD improve things, all depending on the individual circumstances.

Sul.

 

Not quite.

Some services this definitely applies. Quite a few it does not.

 

All services running here. I like keeping things the way they are.

 

Windows 7:

SSDP Discovery service
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Function Discovery Resource Publication

 

Re: w7 and xp, which services did you shut down?

Couldn't be more agreed with you.

 

Thank you for pointing out what others fail to...

 

It would be much easier for me to list the ones I actually have running, as opposed to what I disabled. Here they are: (XP Pro SP3)

Comodo Internet Security Helper Service
Cryptographic Services - Manual
Event Log
Network Connections - Manual
Plug and Play
Remote Procedure Call
Sandboxie Service - Manual
Task Scheduler - for Prefeching
Windows Audio
Windows Firewall/ICS
Windows Management Instrumentation

That's it... and when I want to update Windows (once a month) I set Windows Updates to Auto/Enabled, and BITS to Manual (it enables itself when you check). Then I disable them again.

Please note that I don't recommend that anyone blindly follow this example, or any of these "lists" posted in here. You need to learn for yourself what all of these services do, and exactly how they will impact your particular setup. I know what I'm doing, and nothing that I ever need will be broken as a result. Those tweak guides/lists (like Black Viper) can give you a decent general gist of things, but after doing my own research & experimenting found some of their info. on services at least vague, and in some cases misleading & inaccurate. I made my own list.

And nobody can tell me that the performance gain is negligible/non-existent. It is substantial! There are many other OS tweaks I implement as well, for both performance & security. Even though patches have eliminated pretty much all known vulnerabilities associated with the services by now, you never know when a shiny new one will pop up with Windows. It's also better on your hardware for it to not have to work as hard. I also like to close all my ports at the OS level, and it's necessary to disabled some useless (to me) services to accomplish this. If/when my router fails, I won't have any ports listening anyway.

But bottom line, if you don't know what you're doing. If you even have to ask that question (OP) in the thread title... then you're not ready to do it. But if you know what you're doing, there are certainly benefits to be had.

 

It seems as though XP's services can be safely trimmed down considerably more than Windows 7's.

 

Well said. I think that disabling services is a legacy of XP when machines had small memories and slow processors. Nowadays it is really unnecessary.

 

You are forgetting the HDD, the slowest part of your computer.

When I've disabled the pagefile my XP is faster then ever. No more freezing, crowling after some time, everything is instant, snappier. Of course, if you disable your pagefile you lose standby feature and you can't play games, I guess.
Btw I have only 512MB of RAM.

 

Here's what IS running on my XP, it's tailored to my needs and no problems with it.

Eventlog, PlugPlay
SamSs
DcomLaunch
RpcSs
AudioSrv, CryptSvc, Dhcp, dmserver,
EventSystem, Netman, Nla, TapiSrv, winmgmt
wzcsvc, rasman

if i use printer and/or scanner then add spooler + stisvc

p.s.
Schedule: is good for faster app start, if machne is lacking speed
ProtectedStorage: god no
ShellHWDetection: if you are too lazy to click your autoplay

 

Yes, on my old Dell desktop I had them down to 20 or so services at one point. My view was hey this is my PC I'll decide if a program needs to run or not. NOT MS$. I don't need a service calling home all the time to find out the time of day. Stuff like that.

I haven't worked on W7 services as hard. (yet)

At the moment there are 46 window 7 X4 services many I know I can move to manual and others are there by virtue of the fact that they belong to 3rd party software I have chosen to install myself.