XP Useless Services

What are all the ones I should disable or turn to manual? Anyone know a reputable guide somewhere?

 

The services that can "safely" disabled will vary from PC to PC. If they are with in a network, even what applications they run. Here is a Good Site to start at.

 

I have a router that my PS3 and Wii uses... Thats about it for my "Network"... Having some trouble finding where it tells about each thing and if its safe to delete

 

Check out the site and read up. It is, IMO, one of the best for explaining each service and the possible need for it. My suggestion would be to make changes one at a time and use the PC for a few days to make sure you have not disabled\set to manual something you need.

 

Finding it a bit complicated lol

Can anyone see if this is good?

http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/04/12/slow_computer_speed_up_your.htm

Or if there's a guide kind of easy to follow like it

 

If you are looking to speed up your PC in all honesty you will gain very little. Disabling services may\can however increase your security.

 

Well if somethings useless... I'd rather have it off anyway.

 

http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm
http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/security/page_3.htm
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=896115&postcount=44
The link ThunderZ provided and
http://www.firewallleaktester.com/wwdc.htm

I compared each of them and documented all changes I made. It takes time and a little effort. Do one at a time and note if something breaks. After disabling most of the recommended services, according to TCPView, I didn't have anything listening on any ports except for Avasts WebShield which is to be expected. No one can provided specific services to disable as I found out, I had to re-enable some that I disabled because certain programs needed them. It is a very personal process.

 

In addition to the intelligent advice offered by InnerPeace, employ a monitoring utility to keep an eye on each service host. It will allow making educated decision's for your particular *surf* habit's. Be aware that certain services you might disable are not as easily restarted. Alway's check dependencies and read up prior to pulling the plug.

Steve

 

Hello,
I would not go about disabling anything. Too often you will find thinks broken without knowing way. And undoing problems is very very tricky.
Mrk

 

Service's? We DON'T NEED no steenking services Mrk! True, but NOT practical.
Think of useless service's as spare tire's and you'll realize it's OK not to tinker.

Steve, ExPeaUser

 

Played around with the info. offered in GlobalForces` link. Windows really does still work, well.... in a very limited fashion anyways. Not really practical for the great majority of users. If I remember correctly recovering from this configuration was not as easy as just turning the services back on either. Just a word of warning to those who only have one box to experiment with.

 

That's correct ThunderZ too much to easily recover all those disabled service's. For the folk's who'd like nothing more than to go about their business happily uninterrupted, leave well enough alone while thing's work. Be happy.

S

 

My only problem is I am a recovering Tweaker. Have learned more times by doing things the hard way = breaking something then just leaving well enough alone.

@ btman. Some of the services are pretty obvious. If you do not have a printer then Print Spooler can be disabled. I have never really found the Indexing Service to make any difference in performance whether it is left running or not. . If you use a third party firewall and do not use ICS then there is another service you should be able to safely disable. Also Messenger can be disabled. It is\should be already by default in XP and later I think. Purely my personal preference, since I do not rely on the Windows Security Center is to disable it as well. No infrared devices, another unneeded service. As stated by Innerpeace it is a very personal process. Something you disable today may be needed tomorrow. If you choose to proceed, do so with extreme caution!

 

Hi Guys,

I'm surprised in a discussion about XP services no one has mentioned:

http://www.blackviper.com/index.html

Also should the user keep notes as to changes made, this will make future problem solving easy.

Take Care
Rico

 

My son made a useful suggestion to me. He agrees that a very few services (messenger, for example) should be outright disabled, but most of the "iffy" ones can simply be set to manual startup rather than automatic. Not a great security improvement, but at least they're not hogging the system unless and until actually needed.

 

Also, if you're disabling or setting individual services to manual one at a time, then keep an eye on your Event Viewer Logs as well, sometimes you will see errors there as a result of disabling a service, and this will give you a clue as to which ones to leave alone and so on...

 

i folowed the elder geek tweak guide.
for safety i reccomend disabling the messenger service and the remote registry service.
lodore

 

I use XP Antispy for disabling services that I don't want to run.
Windows Firewall,Security Center,Error Reporting,Automatic Updates are 4 that I disabled with no ill effects.
When I want to use Windows Update I enable the automatic service before going to the update site.

 

The freeware "nLite" is also usefull to create a customized Windows-CD and it allows :
- slipstreaming
- patches
- removal of components
- tweaking, including services
- ...
The advantage is that you have to do this only one time, because nLite creates a new Windows-CD.

I think there is also vLite for winVISTA.

 

Heres what i have disabled. However this is specific to my current setup.

 

So much for taking notice btman found ThunderZ's BV link complicated. Oh well ....
*MikeBCda offered practical advice for you btman along with most of the other's.

Steve

 

This is exactly what I want! Thanks ErikAlbert...