I thought so too before that it's one of the crucial services but in essence it's main point is WMI classes, that's useful in lets say CPU/Memory information, for example I miss CPU utilization bar in the Speedfan program, but the program works and I use it every day. Windows Firewall needs it, but it's also the only Firewall which needs it and it's closest thing to no firewall. DHCP service needed it before or I remembered it wrong because some user said to me that it doesn't need it (any more?). Or the removal removed the dependency string from the reg... Windows built-in Internet Connection Sharing needs it, and that's the only thing which can make me keep the service, but I got the router with the WAN port so no reason any more. One more thing which people seem not to get...you can remove all components and the majority of programs would work just fine. Keep IE Core and DirectX and you're almost completely safe from reinstall. Then when you get some error popup or missing functionality you see what it needs then write it down, that day try all your usual programs, see what else is needed and then reinstall, but of course you have to be into all that backup important data stuff or you'll be sorry.