Hey guys, I remember a while back I tweaked XP some by turning off a lot of features (ie. that annoying left "help" menu in My Computer) by going into registry. But I also remember reading a guide and turning off Windows services. However today I was browsing through msconfig and checking out my startups and all the tabs, then I cam across my "Services" tab and I said "Holy Shiet, thats alot of Windows services." Most of them also say 'running' next to them and some say 'stopped.' But I think about 97% of them are enabled. To me most of them look useless and just cpu hoggers. So I made some screen shots (had to make more than 1 because the damn window wont expand, so I made several then attached them). Could you guys let me know which ones can be disabled? It would be very helpful. Just the Microsoft ones need to be explained, I know that the Norton ones need to stay on. some I think are obvious that they need to stay on, like Network, but other I have no clue .

Thank You guys so much, I know its kinda a big question,

TyP3-R

First of all, do not change services from MSCONFIG, it was originally intended as a preview pane just to check and see if things were or were not running, diagnostics for system intergrators. But now people adjust it from there because they think thats how windows services management was intended to be used, but it was not.

Second;
Start>Run>Type "services.msc" (without quotes)
Then read this excellent guide on configuring windows services for optimal system performance.

What happens if you use the MSConfig? I had heard this before without a good explanation why, other than you can turn off the wrong thing, do you lose benchmark points or something going through MSConfig?
It seems to work fine for me so far....

I have been leary of tweeking in the registry, so much can go wrong if you make a mistake, the registry is not very user friendly

BTW, that is a great guide, the one I use too

Thx Tekxoid, worked out great, easy to understand and pretty fast. Necro it isnt really the registry ur thinking of, the services menu is easy to use. Just right click on the service, then goto properties and choose ur setting.

Oh, Cool!
Thanks, I missed that

Quote: Originally posted by $SOLID$ Necro What happens if you use the MSConfig? I had heard this before without a good explanation why, other than you can turn off the wrong thing, do you lose benchmark points or something going through MSConfig? It seems to work fine for me so far.... I have been leary of tweeking in the registry, so much can go wrong if you make a mistake, the registry is not very user friendly BTW, that is a great guide, the one I use too

MSConfig has been known in the past to save settings with incorrect credentials or invalid spare data causing permanent (the service becomes un-modifyable) load issues with the whichever service you modified the settings of, thus why I forbid editing services from msconfig.
Maybe somewhere in the 100+ microsoft hot patches there is a fix for it, I don't know.

And if that weren't enough, there's also the annoying dialog the next reboot saying "You have used the system configuration utility to..."

Schweeeet!!! Thanks for the linkage Tex!