Stop services permanantely

[Thunderbolt 2864]

Hello all,

I've disabled some services and when I reboot into Windows by restarting the whole PC, the services I've disabled previously have been turned back on by default. Is there a way to disable them permanantely without them restarting themselves again when I restart Windows? Thanks.

[stickzilla]

When you stop the services, are you then changing the Startup Type to Disabled ? This is assuming you are doing this through the mmc.

Just wanna make sure you aren't simply stopping the service but allowing it to have the Automatic Startup Type.

[Tarun]

Read this

[Andromeda43]

I run my own Computer Business and have for over ten years. My specialty is re-tuning the OS for maximum efficiency. You can't have an efficient OS when it's running a dozen or more totally Redundant Services in the background, all the time.

Here's the who and how of getting the crapola services to stop running.

***************************************

Here's my short, short list of services to disable for a stand alone PC, not on a network: From the RUN box, type in Services.msc , then maximize the window to full screen size. Then scroll down the list of services to each item on the following list and right click on an item and then click Properties. In the properties box you can Stop a running service and then set the action box to "Disable". Then Apply the change and OK the window to close it. Move down the list to the next item and repeat the process. When done, close the entire window and reboot your PC.

Clip book

Computer Browser

Error Reporting Service

Messenger

Performance Logs and Alerts

Portable Serial Number

Remote Registry

Remote Desktop Help Session Manager

Routing and Remote Access

Server (leave this on for a local network)

Smart Card Helper

System Event Notification

Task Scheduler

Universal Plug and Play Device Host

Upload Manager

Web Client

Windows time

Wireless Zero Configuration (disable if you will never use a wireless network)

*******************************

It's easiest if you just print out this list before you start.

There are more that you can shut down, like "Themes", which I never use, but this list is a good place to start.

Good Luck and Happy Computing,

Andromeda43 B)

[Tarun]

Nice job telling people how to break their PCs Andromeda. No, really. That can really screw them up, and then they'll wonder "Why isn't this working!?"

Pretty much a repeat of what I've said earlier.

If you knew what you (not you as in YOU, but you as in anyone) were doing, you'd know not to disable services at all. Also, disabling idle services offers zero performance gain. Idle services take no RAM or CPU power at all. I'd love to quote the MSDN article, but I can't find it at the moment. The basic summary is that disabling a service that wasn't doing anything frees absolutely no resources.

You should never disable the error reporting service. Error reporting allows the end-user to obtain information after "serious error" crash dumps (STOP errors/BSoDs). It also provides the user with feedback if an issue has already been resolved. Example: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=894391

I had submitted an error report about this crash one day, and got no response back. The problem kept happening, and on multiple computers, so a few days later, I submitted it again, but this time, error reporting took me to a page stating that the cause was unknown but it research was in progress. Four days later, I submitted it again, and it took me to a page with the patch and the error never happened again.

There will be a program just to undo all the crap that users are doing to their systems these days, including disabling what they think are "unused" services. If there weren't used, why would they exist? If they were unused, then they would be idle, and not taking up any resources at all. When the time comes to use the service, it will work fine, and all will be well. 6 months later, a program attempts to use a service that you've disabled because you think you are better than your OS, and you get a generic error: "The RPC server is unavailable". Now you think that the program you're using is a piece of crap, or Windows is a piece of crap, and you format/reinstall, and it works for a while... until you do your "tweaking" routine again.

Now Andromeda, please stop telling people to break their computers. You're telling them to turn off many critical processes that will efficiently and effectively SPEED UP their computers, not slow them down. One such process is the Task Scheduler which handles prefetch. As you should already know, prefetch helps to optimize the boot and application load times. I've already covered just how critical the Error Reporting service is.

Just look at how critical those two are. I'll leave it at that, because I'm sorry but you're not showing any "expertise" for being a tech shop owner. If you "knew" what you were doing, you'd know to leave the services well enough alone.

For all of us with actual, real technical expertise who have to fix the critical issues that YOU (and people like you) cause; please stop posting that garbage.

Thank you.

[Synapse]

I have to agree with Tarun, disabling services does more harm then good.

although, even though i used to disable a lot of services to pinch that extra little bit out of my system, it got too tiresome to keep up with what does what and what depends on what.

I however only find 2 services worth disabling...

1. Messenger Service (if not on a router will cause spam messages cause there no blocking of port 1026-1028, if you're on a router it's helpful for network admins to send messages to clients)

2. Indexing service (used to hear that this ran while playing games, but i never noticed it.. i disable it though since i remeber pretty much wherever i put a file and don't search my hard drive too much)

[Thunderbolt 2864]

Thanks for the replies, people. I just wanted to stop some useless services I don't need.

[LLXX]

Stop spreading myths. I can already see one major hole in your reasoning.

Also, disabling idle services offers zero performance gain. Idle services take no RAM or CPU power at all.

Then tell me why those numbers under RAM Usage next to the svchost.exe's are not zero, nor does the CPU column for them remain at zero. If that were the case, I would expect to see absolutely NO difference in performance and memory usage between having minimal services running and having all of them running. Common sense, and empirical testing, shows otherwise - I had a pic showing nearly all the services in the service control manager running, and a pic of the taskmgr as well. I can't find it at the moment but the commit charge was something like 150M and the number of processes in the mid 20s. After going down to minimal services, commit charge is down in the low 60M after a reboot, and the number of processes below 15. Looking at RAM usage statistics in the task manager also shows much reduced numbers.

The "error reporting" service does not need to be running nor present. M$ just wants to know more about what's in the machines of unwary customers, and IMHO that sort of information should remain private.

Why did M$ install so many services? Because everyone has his/her own needs for the system, and M$ wanted XP to be general-purpose and having be suitable for many uses. Not everyone needs every service, but I'm sure at least someone needs a specific service.

Regarding disabling RPC, that's obviously not a good idea, and this is why tuning services should be something done carefully and with attention to detail.

The Task Scheduler does handle the prefetch, but you do NOT need it to be prefetching every single time it's booted. A few days ago I decided to disable the prefetcher completely (via a registry key) and delete everything in the Prefetch directory to see what effect on boot times it would have. Big surprise - startup dropped from the previous 10 seconds down to ~5. Enabled it again to see what would happen, and the boot time dropped again, this time only 3 seconds. Disabled it and cleared the prefetch, and rebooted. The 3-second boot stayed, and subsequently remained. Seeing how far I could go, I tried BootVis optimiser. Now I have a system that boots in approximately 1 second (the moving bit of the load bar doesn't even make it halfway across on the boot screen), prefetch still disabled. My theory is that once the layout of the boot files has been established, the prefetcher only slows down the boot by attempting to find a better place for them, even though they've already been placed optimally after the first three boots or so.

Sorry for showing off my ultra-optimised system, but it just has to be done... this is just after a boot with nothing else running

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/428/serviceswv1.png

Edited October 17, 2006 by LLXX

[Tarun]

Play it safe, leave your services alone.

LLXX, I suggest you read about Windows Memory Management and learn many things from it.

I also suggest you re-read what happens with Error Reporting and why it's good to leave the service on and running. You don't seem to grasp the concept of Windows XP and it's services very well.

Research the prefetch feature as well. It runs ProcessIdleTasks every three days.

Prefetch info for you:

Ed Bott - Prefetch 1
Ed Bott - Prefetch 2
Ed Bott - Prefetch 3
Ed Bott - Prefetch 4
Ryan Myers - Prefetch
XP Myths - Optimization
TweakHound's Super XP Tweaking Guide

Stop "optimizing" prefetch!

The best XP Tweaks site ever made! Language Warning at the linked site

No myths here, just stopping the majority of crap many uneducated users tend to spout. Educate yourself and don't be one of them, please.

[Zxian]

Then tell me why those numbers under RAM Usage next to the svchost.exe's are not zero, nor does the CPU column for them remain at zero. If that were the case, I would expect to see absolutely NO difference in performance and memory usage between having minimal services running and having all of them running. Common sense, and empirical testing, shows otherwise - I had a pic showing nearly all the services in the service control manager running, and a pic of the taskmgr as well. I can't find it at the moment but the commit charge was something like 150M and the number of processes in the mid 20s. After going down to minimal services, commit charge is down in the low 60M after a reboot, and the number of processes below 15. Looking at RAM usage statistics in the task manager also shows much reduced numbers.

That's your problem there... you're using Task Manager to give you your numbers. Task Manager lies about the "Memory usage" of a particular program. It doesn't tell you whether or not that memory is located in RAM or on disk. If that section of memory has been paged to disk (like unused services are), then it's not using up any RAM. Simple, no?

If your svchost processes aren't sitting at zero when your computer isn't doing anything, then you've probably got something else going on. My system doesn't do that, nor does any other that I've seen that has been free of malware or strange programs.

Why does number of processes relate to system performance? Most processes sit there not doing anything... so why do you care? My file server has about 40 processes running at any given time, because it's got 3 remote users logged in. Does that make it run noticably slower? Not really... mind you I haven't run any benchmarks on it, but it runs for 30 days at at time, and then I reboot it for Windows Updates. Here.. download this program - nothing.exe. It's a pretty much empty .NET program that doesn't do anything. Leave it running and play your games, run your benchmarks... do you notice anything different?

[LLXX]

I've been reading about these controversial issues for the last while...

I don't know what exactly is with the prefetch thing, but I just did the same procedure above on my laptop (which I haven't done much tweaking with), and it reduced the startup time from 15 to 4 seconds. Quite a big difference, and definitely a positive one too. Maybe it just depends on your hardware configuration...

As for the remark about using the task manager, I don't really care whether it's accurate or not, just as long as it's showing relatively correct results. If a process A has allocated more than process B, then it will show A with a higher RAM usage as B; that's all I need to know, and whether or not these figures are connected with reality is not the issue as long as it is relatively correct.

Maybe all of you are not that sensitive to system performance but I like mine to be the most optimised possible. I can tell the difference between a 0.05 and a 0.01-second response time, the latter feels instantaneous while the former is already sluggish by my definition (my CPU is at 4.17GHz, so in 0.05 seconds it's already executed 208 million clock cycles!), and the 0.1 to 1-second response times of a default Windows XP install on my machine feel absolutely eternal.

[Ctrl-X]

Stop spreading myths. I can already see one major hole in your reasoning.

[...]

Seeing how far I could go, I tried BootVis optimiser.

Talk about spreading myths... BootVis is not an optimizer

Please note that Bootvis.exe is not a tool that will improve boot/resume performance for end users. Contrary to some published reports, Bootvis.exe cannot reduce or alter a system's boot or resume performance. The boot optimization routines invoked by Bootvis.exe are built into Windows XP. These routines run automatically at pre-determined times as part of the normal operation of the operating system.

Source: Fast Boot / Fast Resume Design (Microsoft Windows Hardware Developer Central)

[Andromeda43]

Tarun,

You should write "Black Viper" and tell him to stop publishing his

list of services to shut down. Tell HIM he's an id***!

And, I don't really care if you ARE a mod here.....that's no excuse or license to FLAME me.

Your opinion is just that,,,,,'Your Opinion'.

I seriously doubt that I'll quit doing what I do to increase PC's performance.

Because, my customers compliment me on how much faster their PC's run

after I've tuned them up. Shutting down redundant services is only a very

small part of the entire process.

I suggest that those who are on the fence about shutting down services, just

take them one or two at a time and see what results they get.

I recently turned task scheduler back on because one of my security programs

wanted to use it for its auto updates. Who would'a thunk it?

B)

[Tarun]

Tarun,

You should write "Black Viper" and tell him to stop publishing his

list of services to shut down. Tell HIM he's an id***!

And, I don't really care if you ARE a mod here.....that's no excuse or license to FLAME me.

Your opinion is just that,,,,,'Your Opinion'.

I seriously doubt that I'll quit doing what I do to increase PC's performance.

Because, my customers compliment me on how much faster their PC's run

after I've tuned them up. Shutting down redundant services is only a very

small part of the entire process.

I suggest that those who are on the fence about shutting down services, just

take them one or two at a time and see what results they get.

I recently turned task scheduler back on because one of my security programs

wanted to use it for its auto updates. Who would'a thunk it?

B)

No one was flaming you here dude, relax.

You are right on one thing for sure. BlackViper is not the smartest apple in the bunch. Check out where they debunked his entire tweaking guide.

Services tweaks - debunked (XP) - with special focus on BlackViper

You just said yourself a security program required the Task Scheduler service to be running. So you had to go back in and set it to Automatic.

Now, what do you think your customers do? They won't know to go in and configure their service back. More likely than not, they will either call you and complain since it was you/your shop who "fixed" their computer. Since it would be your shop causing the problem, do you think they'd return to your shop in the future if you broke their computer by tweaking it? No, they won't be back; and believe me, they'll tell their friends too.

As much as you may think you're helping them, you're actually hindering them and their computer experience. While they may think it's a problem with the OS, it was actually the one who disabled the services which should be left alone.

None of this is flaming dude, it's common sense and the truth.

[Zxian]

As for the remark about using the task manager, I don't really care whether it's accurate or not, just as long as it's showing relatively correct results. If a process A has allocated more than process B, then it will show A with a higher RAM usage as B; that's all I need to know, and whether or not these figures are connected with reality is not the issue as long as it is relatively correct.

But that's the entire problem... Task Manager doesn't give even remotely correct figures on memory usage. Remember the whole "minimize" trick so "solve" Firefox's memory leak problems? That's not a fix at all. There's no way that minimizing a program will "free" 80MB of memory. What's actually happening is that Windows is saying that there is now ~3MB of RAM dedicated to that process that are not allowed to be paged to disk.

I think a good analogy to the whole services discussion would be to look at automatic windsheild wipers on a fancy new car (just as an example). They're there, right? And on sunny days, they don't do anything, so most people think "Why do I need these...?" Some people will go as far as to remove them from the car so that the car is lighter, handles better, and has a better drag coefficient. But then one day... it starts to rain... what then? Sure - while it was sunny, the car performed that little bit faster, but it's not a complete package that can take care of itself. You now have to lean out the window to wipe off the windsheild yourself. It's the same idea when you disable/remove services. You remove functionality and end up doing more work when things go wrong. If you're not using that functionality right now, you'll probably come across a day when you need it.