What services are Absolutely required for browsing & network?

Yep. And I think how much lighter your system "feels" goes beyond what figures are reflected via pen & paper. More than the mere sum of it's parts, if you will, once you start combining tweaks?

For example, if I go into: Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance/Settings/Visual Effects... Everything on that list is checked by default. When I'm done with it, only 4 things are. I don't know if unchecking all those things saves me a single byte of RAM, but Windows Explorer is twice as responsive afterward... and nobody can tell me otherwise.

 

Yes, I've slowly been through all the services disabling them one by one on a number of occasions. I was left impressed with how sensibly Microsoft have set up their services in Windows 7 by default. Most services that are actually running tend to be needed for most people, and most of those set to Manual are needed on occasion.

For our machines, I changed a few items to Manual rather than Automatic, and disabled a few items that we didn't need, but for the most part the only Windows services that really made a difference for us were basics like turning off Search Index and Windows Defender. I left on the defragmenter since it only works on idle anyway.

I've done loads of tiny tweaks that I couldn't even put to paper. I've tried esoteric things like putting the kernel into memory (just to actually make more use of 4GB RAM), but it's the simple stuff like managing third party autoruns and services where the biggest performance gains/losses are IMO. Being honest with myself, I know that most of the tinkering I'm happy to do on my own machines isn't worth the time it would take to do on someone else's.

 

Oh, I agree with that very much.

I do much the same as you likely, setting things to manual a lot and disabling only those that are just a waste of resources because they are not used. Whether a machine has resources to spare or not is not part of my equation - I use what I need.

I have found, over the years, that things don't always reproduce themselves. Example, on some XP machines, at some times, the service for scanners (don't have xp near right now) causes the desktop to take about 2 minutes to be displayed. Disabling that service fixes the problem instantly. However, if you use a scanner and it has a button on the front to bring up the scan software, it will no longer work. It breaks other things too. But a 2 minute wait is a long time on a reboot.

To make things even more unpredictable, literally days later that service can be enabled and the problem is not apparent any longer. Why? Don't know. All I know is that by being familiar with services (and running processes as you point out) allows me to fix problems that may or may not be related to "speed", but are problems none the less.

later.

Sul.

 

Right. You might save 100MB through disabling services but then you may also perform some other tweaks on your system that altogether provides a much larger boost.

There's no downside to disabling a service you'll never use. The benefits can be potentially quite large in terms of security and there are obvious and blatant improvements to RAM usage.

 

The best advice I can give (apart from only changing one thing at a time) is:

Keep a written record of all changes made and the date on which it was done.

You may not need a particular function now, or your testing may not reveal broken functionality straight away. In the weeks/months/years to follow you will welcome having a paper trail to help troubleshoot why your system or newly installed hardware/software isn't working as expected.

 

With Sully's help ( he pointed me to some great tools to help me in my troubleshooting) I have found and added in the services I needed for networking.

Out of the 75 services listed in Msconfig I am only running 25 and everything I need to work, works. That's 50 services I told to take a hike and my computer is much faster for it. I needed more resources available because I'm running a copy of Linux through a virtual machine. On that copy of Linux I'm running a MUD, text based game. It's a multi user game made so people over the internet can connect to it. I am hosting this Mud game through Linux through a virtual machine through windows 7. Linux in the virtual machine runs way better than it did without disabling those 50 services. I can even host the game and have a browser open and watch flash videos. The virtual machine is using 2 gigs of ram, and windows 7 is using 2 gigs of ram.

This will work nicely until I can find an old 586 computer or similar to dedicate to running the Mud.

 

I use both tweakguides.com and black vipers stuff to optimize my systems.

Disabling services in XP definitely provided a significant boost, particularly the indexing and error reporting services slow down XP systems.

In Windows 7 I think I disabled maybe 10 services, Microsoft and some MS Technet articles stated that disabling search indexing service provides zero benefit, my Windows 7 system uses much less HD (never see the HD light on anymore) and it does feel a tad more responsive after disabling this service. Since I don't search much, its an easy choice to disable it

Overall I don't think its a placebo effect, although its more valid for XP systems overall.

 

Did you record I/O, ram usage, read/writes, and CPU before and after you disabled services?

Windows 7 is far better at managing services than any OS before it.

 

Not only that, but most of the services in 7 and above are manual or manual triggered. Currently I have less than a 3rd of the total services actually active without even touching them, there's no need to go around disabling them as they will load only when required.

The only service I disable is the Search service, I never use search.

 

No. That was irreverent. I'm old school. I don't trust what those app tell me. I don't trust Microsoft to not lie to me about how well Windows 7 manages those things. I measure the difference gained in how well Linux preforms under a VM or how well my games work after I disable services. That's all the proof I need to know the tweaks are working. Before tweaks those things hardly run, after disabling the services they run great. Nuff said. You may look at those numbers if you had em and say, you can't be getting that much of a gain - but I do so it all becomes academic. I strongly suspect some of those services have a dual function that MS is hiding from you, so your not getting the full story on those numbers. Microsoft has done this in the past. When they get busted, they backpedal. I have to use Microsoft for gaming. One day if React OS ever grows up or Wine becomes so good where it will play all windows apps in Linux better than windows does ( which it does do for many apps) then I'll leave the con artist MS is in the dirt and never look back.

 

At this point Ill take this thread with a grain of salt. There has been no quantifiable proof for or against MS services. The only proof in this thread is the fact that a MS service isnt used unless a program is running that requires that service.

 

I believe Microsoft is tricking people into a false sense of security by the claims that setting a service to manual is just as good as disabling it. I used my gaming profile without networking all the time, not just for gaming.. for running any app I had. I never get an error saying the app cant run because of a missing needed service. I'm only running 16 to 18 services with that profile and all the rest are disabled. Why let something load when Microsoft deems it necessary? Things willy nilly running in the background because you give it that option. In truth, unless you disable them, you don't know what Microsoft is doing behind your back.

Besides.. if 1/3 of my services are set to manual by default - yet I still get a gain when I disable them.. how do you account for that? The only possibility is those services set to manual are being activated more than you know. You people are way too trusting of Microsoft. Look at their history and their business model. Look at all the times they have been pulled into court for lying to people or dishonest business practices.

An operating system only has one job - that's to run your apps when you tell it to. If the OS assumes more of an active role than that then it no longer is an operating system, it becomes a controlling system that dictates to the user that it, not the user is in control. We must not allow our operating systems and thus Microsoft to have this kind of power. Before you know it, you won't have any power over your PC.

 

If they are so dishonest and cant be trusted then setting them to disabled is a false sense of security. What makes you think MS doesnt have the ability to use a disabled service, keep it displayed to the end user as disabled, and you think your all safe and secure? You should put on your tin hat and get off the internet.

 

Hi DarkPhoenix

It is not obligatory for you to use any Microsoft product, it is a choice.

If have no trust in a product, I personally would not use it.

Take Care
TheQuest

 

Circular argument. Besides, I don't trust MS not to pull such crap. But those things are easier to check on with external tools. I should get off the internet? So, now this is personal? Tsk tsk. Nope, I aint going anywhere. I'm the voice or reason crying in the wilderness saying Don't trust the mega corp because if you do and they screw you, you won't see it coming.. as has happened many times with MS before. You don't wanna hear the sermon, get off the thread.

 

Actually, there has been.

Maybe us "wackos" here who support the premise that you can get performance increases by managing your services are... um, shall we say, just noobs who don't know jack?

Where did objectivity go I wonder...

Sul.

 

To whitedragons credit, no one has objectively stated benefits of disabling services. However thats not saying much as no one on the internet has clearly demonstrated benefits of disabling services. All the XP experts would say one of the first things to do is disable the indexing and error reporting services, to me this was an indisputable performance boost although no benchmarks I've seen prove it, this doesn't make the practice any less valid.

For 4 months I used Windows 7 with the search indexing service left at default, which is automatic. My beloved tweakguides.com and several MS articles state this service doesn't hinder performance. I would run Windows with only MSE installed, even with MSE disabled my hard drive was under constant work from this service. People said "it'll stop indexing once it learns your habits on how you use your computer"....I use my pc hours a day and 4 months later this service still was slowing me down and since I know where my files are I don't need this service. If you'd like to test it, disable windows search, reboot, use your pc for a few hours and report back if your system feels snappier. Mine does and no loss in functionality for me. Other than this single service and having to tweak the firewall for outbound protection, Windows 7 is fairly optimized out of the box.

 

@adrenaline7

So which is it for you? On one hand you say no one has objectively stated benefits, yet you have objectively stated one service yourself. There are many such statements here on this forum.

The problem is (no offense to whitedragon) some people don't seem to believe others when they state there are benefits to be had. You can find better performance as well as better security. Not that everyone will, but to dismiss it as no possibility is just not correct. It is not only possible, but very real.

It is somewhat objective though as to exactly what an improvement is. As you found turning indexing off stopped the constant reads on your hdd, another might find that acceptible because they do more searches and therefore they want what that service provides. It doesn't make your performance boost by turning it off any different than thier performance boost by leaving it on. It all depends on how you are defining performance.

Do note, I am not trying to single out whitedragon. I am only trying to point out that while one can certainly take the viewpoint like whitedragon does, it does not make it the only truth. And further, I fail to understand why some don't believe others that they did get a performance boost by managing services themselves rather than let MS dictate what is right for everyone. I mean, I think 99% of the people here at wilders are just sharing thier views and experiences. Why would we lie about whether disabling services is a benefit for us or not? Just to make others disable them and then laugh when they do? I don't think many here are like that at all.

But maybe my glass is always half full

Sul.

 

Open up Firefox, your document manager, a chat aggregator, etc. Your system will slow down.

That's what a service is - a program, albeit usually not such a heavy one.

The point is that this is common sense. Disabling programs increases performance.

The difference between manual and disable is that your browser might start a printer service for printing a page or some such thing. If it's set to manual it will start. If it isn't it won't.

Services with dependent services will start those services unless they are all disabled.

 

I think it may depend on how much of a load is put on the machine whether one can see any performance difference in Win 7 or not. I never noticed any difference, but then again, my demands on the machine were few in my day to day use of the machine. Others who place high demands on the hardware could perhaps see performance gains when disabling services. I don't know. Guess it just depends on each individual case...

 

Exactly.

Sul.

 

Aside from isolated corner cases and personal feelings, the whole idea that disabling services will benefit something is a misconception of how things work and how they should be handled. Before you can disable anything, you need to understand WHY something is slow, if at all. Until you do that, any toggling on and off is just a shot in the dark.

100% of online guides read: disable this or that - but it really is: what my personal, isolated test case shows to be best for X person. So no online guide can offer any blanket improvement for everyone, and in most cases, it's placebo and unknown damage.

I am willing to bet my kidney that if I were to examine any one machine with supposed slowness, I would find the reasons why the slowness manifests and I guarantee it has nothing to do with MS services.

Just out of curiosity, Dark, are you running any security software by any chance?

Regards,
Mrk

 

No security software. I on occasion use Sandboxie to run a secure internet browser but only when I'm about to download something from a source that could be ify. I have Malwarebytes installed in case I wanna scan my system and i run it about once every two weeks. I know some security apps can slow the system down like Norton or some other anti virus apps.. I refuse to use anything that runs as a resident. A few weeks ago I just did a repair upgrade to fix a problem with easyBCD, so my entire system should be as clean as a default system from the windows protected system apps point of view. I do keep my hard drive defragged, I don't let a lot of startup items run and I don't tweak the registry. I don't use service packs unless I need them to fix something that's broken.. same goes with Windows Updates. I'm telling you, you can put my system under a microscope and not find a thing wrong with it. This isn't my first rodeo. I have been using windows for over 20 years.

I Know where most of my problem is. The CPU is my worst bottleneck. (A single core 2.1 ghz AMD Sempron II. I have 4 gigs of ram. I have a 336 MB video chip that uses shared system ram for an additional 1.2 gigs of video ram for a total of 1.5 gigs for video.) - that and stuff taking up resources like services I don't need to run just because some jack wagon at microsoft tells me my system needs to run it. I only like to run a few apps at a time. Right now, nothing runs when I'm playing games. For non game stuff, I run a minimal Linux in a VM and the only thing it's running is a Mud which is a text based game running from a telnet connection. I keep a browser open with a few tabs to surf the web and study my LPC scripting language and go to a few forums. Now and then I might open Thunderbird to check my mail.

Now.. my wife's XP system.. she has 2 gigs of ram and a 250 mb video card and a 3.0 ghz Pentium 4. She keeps skype, Second Life, a graphical intense virtual world, bit torrent client, the weather channel app, google desktop, superfinder XT and advanced system care running all the time - then she opens a browser and watches HULU. I have no idea how that system is handling it, and she has no tweaks, no slowdowns. I tend to think XP was so far superior to windows 7. My CPU is way newer than the old pentium 4. if I ran the same apps as she does, I should get better resources left over but I dont. Windows 7 manages memory better.. yeah.. I'll believe that when pigs fly. Perhaps the case is Windows 7 doesn't manage the CPU as well as XP did. Oh I can play games way better than she can.. but thats about it. Disabling those services really makes a difference.

 

Nothing personal. Your logic is just flawed. Circular argument or not is irrelevant. If you believe MS is so evil you dont know what is running then you have to believe even if you disable them you dont know what is really running. Later you say you have used it for 20 years. If its so rotten and evil and such a devil of an empire why use it? Last time I checked you dont need Windows to check your email through an email client or run a MUD.

No offense taken.

Not sure what people in this thread dont understand. Sure a program takes up resources. Thats only true if its running. Aside from that it takes up HD space and nothing else. Same goes for a service. If a program is running that requires it, then it will consume resources. If a program isnt running that requires that service nothing is being consumed. You can verify this by watching your services in Task Manager. Services that arent being used will have no CPU time, no I/O.

100% agree. In his reply to this he even states his processor is ancient.

 

Because I posted subjective evidence, and thats all there is on services. Objective evidence would include data.