How many processes do you have on your Windows 7 machine?

Idle about 36 processes also run the games (with close down apps, anti-virus, etc)

Heavy load about 45-50 processes included FF 4 beta, few video edits, some apps, steam etc..

I like to keep processes low as possible.

Best memories was XP with 22 processes or less, feel snappier and speedy.
 
OVER 9000!

Currently have aroun 68 processes, on a unmolested Windows 7 Pro install
 
21 give or take. From checking all users, 50ish.
 
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73 (haven't rebooted in a couple of weeks though... :) )
W7 Ultimate with AV, a few IE, thunderbird, SMP and GPU folding, HFM.net, IM, speedfan and a few more things.
 
pigster said:
What is 'wasted RAM'? Can you explain how that improves performance and reliability?
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Once again I never said it does either of those. It clears up system resources for things I do need running. As an example, why do I need the ICS (Internet connection sharing) service ever loading/running when I know for a fact i will never use it. My mobo has 1 network connection anyway. So any system resources utilized by that are 100% wasted. Any time loading during boot, and any cpu cycles that were ever used on it were a waste. That's just 1 example, but applies to all the services I disabled. So now windows is running how I need it, using minimal system resources, and there is plenty of ram available when needed for apps like autocad/photoshop/BC2 etc.
 
Biznatch said:
Once again I never said it does either of those. It clears up system resources for things I do need running. As an example, why do I need the ICS (Internet connection sharing) service ever loading/running when I know for a fact i will never use it. My mobo has 1 network connection anyway. So any system resources utilized by that are 100% wasted. Any time loading during boot, and any cpu cycles that were ever used on it were a waste. That's just 1 example, but applies to all the services I disabled. So now windows is running how I need it, using minimal system resources, and there is plenty of ram available when needed for apps like autocad/photoshop/BC2 etc.
Click to expand...

Protip: services that aren't needed aren't running. ICS included. Nothing's wasted.
 
Azhar said:
Protip: services that aren't needed aren't running. ICS included. Nothing's wasted.
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ICS was just an example off the top of my head. There were more than a couple that started automatically. Those were running, I had no use for them, now they aren't running anymore. Now if you are going to argue that these running services use no resources when not being used, why wouldn't they ALL be set to start at boot.
 
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Biznatch said:
ICS was just an example off the top of my head. There were more than a couple that started automatically. Those were running, I had no use for them, now they aren't running anymore. Now if you are going to argue that these running services use no resources when not being used, why wouldn't they be set to start.
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Because not everyone's tech savvy as us. It's set to start so nobody has to worry about it when they need it. Go ahead and try it. Disable everything and come back and tell us how much resources you regained. I bet it's exactly zero.
 
bigdogchris said:
Like 32-33.

On idle, you should have 29 or 30 with just the OS installed.OS services? None.

As for applications you install, that's up to you.
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There are plenty of services you can disable and still have a functional PC. Which you disable is user choice on which services you need or want. I have a bat file I created and use it to disable the below when I run single player games. Some of those are OS services.


net stop Wlansvc /Y
net stop AntiVirService /Y
net stop AntiVirSchedulerService /Y
net stop ndassvc /Y
net stop SvcOnlineArmor /Y
net stop PnkBstrA /Y
net stop Spooler /Y
net stop Themes /Y
net stop MpsSvc /Y
net stop stisvc /Y
net stop wuauserv /Y
net stop EapHost /Y
net stop FDResPub /Y
net stop iphlpsvc /Y






taskkill /F /IM PnkBstrA.exe
taskkill /F /IM avgnt.exe
taskkill /F /IM avguard.exe
taskkill /F /IM avshadow.exe
taskkill /F /IM ndassvc.exe
taskkill /F /IM sched.exe
taskkill /F /IM spoolsv.exe
 
mortonP said:
There are plenty of services you can disable and still have a functional PC. Which you disable is user choice on which services you need or want. I have a bat file I created and use it to disable the below when I run single player games. Some of those are OS services.


net stop Wlansvc /Y
net stop AntiVirService /Y
net stop AntiVirSchedulerService /Y
net stop ndassvc /Y
net stop SvcOnlineArmor /Y
net stop PnkBstrA /Y
net stop Spooler /Y
net stop Themes /Y
net stop MpsSvc /Y
net stop stisvc /Y
net stop wuauserv /Y
net stop EapHost /Y
net stop FDResPub /Y
net stop iphlpsvc /Y






taskkill /F /IM PnkBstrA.exe
taskkill /F /IM avgnt.exe
taskkill /F /IM avguard.exe
taskkill /F /IM avshadow.exe
taskkill /F /IM ndassvc.exe
taskkill /F /IM sched.exe
taskkill /F /IM spoolsv.exe
Click to expand...

Hilarity ensues. Instead of waiting 10+ seconds for a game to load, you wait 10+ seconds for services to be disabled and for no gain.
 
Azhar said:
Because not everyone's tech savvy as us. It's set to start so nobody has to worry about it when they need it. Go ahead and try it. Disable everything and come back and tell us how much resources you regained. I bet it's exactly zero.
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If you disabled everything you would gain back 100% of your hardware resources. Until you re-install windows that is. I don't think you should include yourself in the tech savvy group if that's your advice. Is this seriously the best counter argument coming back? Just saying no it won't? It sounds like you didn't even read what I said.


Azhar said:
Hilarity ensues. Instead of waiting 10+ seconds for a game to load, you wait 10+ seconds for services to be disabled and for no gain.
Click to expand...

Except it won't take 10 seconds and will free up ram. Not saying I would disable those services as I do use them, but if it works for him...
 
Azhar said:
They're called QuackViper for a reason.
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I face palm hard every time I see that, or someone who thinks that they know better than MS/Windows about Windows.

Azhar said:
Protip: services that aren't needed aren't running. ICS included. Nothing's wasted.
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QFT.

And as far as "clearing up RAM when it's needed... " Windows does this on it's own.

Now here is what I don't 'effing understand. Why the hell so some people spend the money on 4 or more gigs of RAM, and then turn around and don't want it to be used? I mean shit, we finally have an OS and other types of software that can start taking advantage of having more RAM.
 
Biznatch said:
If you disabled everything you would gain back 100% of your hardware resources. Until you re-install windows that is. I don't think you should include yourself in the tech savvy group if that's your advice. Is this seriously the best counter argument coming back? Just saying no it won't? It sounds like you didn't even read what I said..
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You asked why bother enabling all of these services when they're not needed in the first place. The answer to that question is not everyone that uses a computer is tech savvy enough to know to go into Administrator Tools, and Services to enable it. They're on for them, not you and not me. We can disable them to our heart's content but it won't make one iota of a difference. If you say you get back 100% of your resource, I'm impressed. You've done something none of us could do since Windows XP. The few things that are disabled will become enabled when appropriate drivers and software call on them.

I'm curious, and I'm sure there are many other people here that are too: what benchmark did you use to determine your computer to be faster disabling unused services? Think you could post a few screenies that reflect your claim?
 
P4rD0nM3 said:
People still try to disable services that they don't use?
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This. Why does this thread exist? Anyone who is counting how many processes are running is doing it wrong. Either upgrade to a machine that wasn't made in 1998 or actually, you know, use the computer for more than seeing how few processes you can run. Talk about too much time on your hands.

Biznatch said:
Except it won't take 10 seconds and will free up ram.
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Yeah, all of 20MB. :rolleyes:
 
Tawnos said:
The long version follows
Currently I work at Microsoft.
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Then you opinion is biased so can be discounted. :)

After all, it was the noobs at Microsoft that put in the Messenger service that was immediately used to flood our PCs with spyware and they had to release a patch to disable it. Never affected me because I had already disabled that service as soon as I found out that it could compromise my security. Friend of mine bought a book on services and it suggests to disable any service one does not actually need.
 
Azhar said:
Hilarity ensues. Instead of waiting 10+ seconds for a game to load, you wait 10+ seconds for services to be disabled and for no gain.
Click to expand...

AV can take up quite a lot of resources and because Avira has no way to unload it manually I do it with .bat file. You run your PC your way and I'll run mine my way. K?
 
Biznatch said:
Except it won't take 10 seconds and will free up ram. Not saying I would disable those services as I do use them, but if it works for him...
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They are disabled just temporarily and I only use that .bat file for SP games and even then only the ones that are really resource hungry. After a reboot everything is back to normal. I am not done tweaking it yet as there are more services and processes I could unload from memory and still have a fully functional gaming PC. After running F1 2010 I see that Win7 will inform me that I can gain better performance if I disable themes so if there is no performance to be gained from disabling any services why would Win7 give me that report? IMO, those who decry what I and others do are not gamers at all and if they are all they play are casual games and not the likes of Black Shark, FlightsimX etc.

Two totally different kinds of gamers with much different needs from a PC. The reason consoles do so well at gaming performance with far less hardware is due to less background resources being used by the OS so of course disabling unneeded crap will gain some benefit. Hell, there were some gamers back in the days of Win95 who would disable the system clock even before running a game and we all used a utility that allowed us to kill unneeded processes when running our flight sims. Why should it be any dif now on Win7? And it is not just about FPS, some of those background processes that are always being polled may cause slight pauses in the game and no benchmark will show that up.
 
Proxy said:
I face palm hard every time I see that, or someone who thinks that they know better than MS/Windows about Windows.
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Microsoft sets up a PC for Joe Average and not Mr. Hardcore Gamer. Huge difference, and Microsoft cares jack shit about creating a lean and mean OS profile for gamers so we do it ourselves.
 
mortonP said:
Microsoft sets up a PC for Joe Average and not Mr. Hardcore Gamer. Huge difference, and Microsoft cares jack shit about creating a lean and mean OS profile for gamers so we do it ourselves.
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See post #29. Apparently Microsoft do care.
 
Already read it and replied to it. That is someone doing something in their spare time and not on the behalf of Microsoft. His advice applies to Joe Average anyway and I know to check my services if I something is not working properly. My PC, run my way and not Microsoft's way or your's. Choice is good.
 
Jon55 said:
And how exactly did you get that number?
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Assuming that number is correct, I would be more interested in what portion of that number is from windows services as opposed to self-installed (or self-inflicted?) programs.
 
Neb said:
Assuming that number is correct, I would be more interested in what portion of that number is from windows services as opposed to self-installed (or self-inflicted?) programs.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I was hoping he would go over it in detail, especially after making bold claims like that.
 
Azhar said:
You asked why bother enabling all of these services when they're not needed in the first place. The answer to that question is not everyone that uses a computer is tech savvy enough to know to go into Administrator Tools, and Services to enable it. They're on for them, not you and not me. We can disable them to our heart's content but it won't make one iota of a difference. If you say you get back 100% of your resource, I'm impressed. You've done something none of us could do since Windows XP. The few things that are disabled will become enabled when appropriate drivers and software call on them.

I'm curious, and I'm sure there are many other people here that are too: what benchmark did you use to determine your computer to be faster disabling unused services? Think you could post a few screenies that reflect your claim?
Click to expand...

Either you can't read or don't know what you are talking about. You do know that there are 3 settings for the services right? Automatic, manual, and disabled. You know they aren't all set to start with windows right? Only the ones needed running to make everything work for the average joe schmo start, which is a lot more than I need. Also you do know that disabled means the service can't start right? And that some of those services are critical for the system to run? So if you went and disabled every service, Windows would no longer operate, hence it frees up 100% of your resources.

Now better advice might be to set all the services to start automatically and see if your available resources decreases. Running everything at once isn't going to kill the system like disabling will. Now I'm not going to waste my time doing that as my system is running great as configured.

Also to the people who say just buy more ram. You are both the software and hardware companies wet dream. Yes just throw more money at it, that's the best way to accomplish anything. Or I can efficiently use the resources I have and customize the OS to run how I need it. That's what I have done, and it works great for me and multiple others.
 
Biznatch said:
Either you can't read or don't know what you are talking about. You do know that there are 3 settings for the services right? Automatic, manual, and disabled. You know they aren't all set to start with windows right? Only the ones needed running to make everything work for the average joe schmo start, which is a lot more than I need. Also you do know that disabled means the service can't start right? And that some of those services are critical for the system to run? So if you went and disabled every service, Windows would no longer operate, hence it frees up 100% of your resources.

Now better advice might be to set all the services to start automatically and see if your available resources decreases. Running everything at once isn't going to kill the system like disabling will. Now I'm not going to waste my time doing that as my system is running great as configured.

Also to the people who say just buy more ram. You are both the software and hardware companies wet dream. Yes just throw more money at it, that's the best way to accomplish anything. Or I can efficiently use the resources I have and customize the OS to run how I need it. That's what I have done, and it works great for me and multiple others.
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You're still not getting it I see.

We're saying you DON'T have to get more RAM. You DON'T need to throw money at Windows 7 to improve it because whether resources are on automatic or not, it's not doing anything unless it's absolutely needed.

YOU'RE the one who's bitching that enabled and automatic services are sucking up resources and that it needs to be disabled as you see fit. That's simply not true since Windows XP.

But you're absolutely right, it's your computer. Have at it and enjoy your placebo effect.

By the way, I still don't see any proof to yours and mortonP's claim. Hmm, I wonder why.
 
Azhar said:
You're still not getting it I see.

We're saying you DON'T have to get more RAM. You DON'T need to throw money at Windows 7 to improve it because whether resources are on automatic or not, it's not doing anything unless it's absolutely needed.

YOU'RE the one who's bitching that enabled and automatic services are sucking up resources and that it needs to be disabled as you see fit. That's simply not true since Windows XP.

But you're absolutely right, it's your computer. Have at it and enjoy your placebo effect.

By the way, I still don't see any proof to yours and mortonP's claim. Hmm, I wonder why.
Click to expand...

Because you can't read and keep arguing against claims I never made. Go back and quote ANYTHING i said about it increasing performance like you keep arguing. Oh wait I didn't, I keep saying over and over that it just decreases wasted ram, increases boot speed and decreases your potential for attack. Don't even see the word performance in there. On top of that, I have actually tried it and *gasp* it did what I claimed. But feel free to keep parroting the same misinformation you read about but have no experience in. And yes you didn't say get more ram, others did though, you should probably read all replies before arguing.

And once again since you obviously can't read. Seriously, don't even bothering replying if you can't answer this question. IF A RUNNING SERVICE CONSUMES NO RESOURCES, WHY DON'T THEY ALL START WITH WINDOWS AND RUN ALL THE TIME!! You obviously think windows has somehow found a way to magically do this, but what you think they only use this magic on a few of the services?
 
Very well then, lets not play semantics. No increasing performance talk, just going by strictly what you said...it decreases wasted ram. How much wasted ram are we talking about here? How much actual benefit will you have from decreasing wasted ram by disabling services? When doing any sort of tweak it's important to benchmark to verify that the changes you are implementing are actually beneficial. Isn't that what computer tweakers and overclockers do?

Note that I did mention that buying ram may a good idea, since in my experience (with the files I work with) running 2GB ram with photoshop is asking for poor performance regardless of how many services you disable.

I don't have a win7 VM handy, but I do have a win xp VM available. Not exactly a perfect example, but since blackviper got his start via disabling XP services, it's not terribly inappropriate IMO. The VM has about 500mb of ram and office 2007 installed.

before:
23 processes running, about 122mb of ram used
beforet.jpg


after, with every possible service turned on and running.
44 processes running, about 165mb of ram used
afterzq.jpg


Difference? 21 processes and 43mb of ram.
 
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Neb said:
Very well then, lets not play semantics. No increasing performance talk, just going by strictly what you said...it decreases wasted ram. How much wasted ram are we talking about here? How much actual benefit will you have from decreasing wasted ram by disabling services? When doing any sort of tweak it's important to benchmark to verify that the changes you are implementing are actually beneficial. Isn't that what computer tweakers and overclockers do?

Note that I did mention that buying ram may a good idea, since in my experience (with the files I work with) running 2GB ram with photoshop is asking for poor performance regardless of how many services you disable.

I don't have a win7 VM handy, but I do have a win xp VM available. Not exactly a perfect example, but since blackviper got his start via disabling XP services, it's not terribly inappropriate IMO. The VM has about 500mb of ram and office 2007 installed.

before:
23 processes running, about 122mb of ram used
beforet.jpg


after, with every possible service turned on and running.
44 processes running, about 165mb of ram used
afterzq.jpg


Difference? 21 processes and 43mb of ram.
Click to expand...

Well since you are going to talk about xp, which as you can see uses substantially less ram, you should talk in percentages. 165 to 122 is a 26.1% decrease in used ram, that is VERY significant. That also doesn't include any resources used at boot to start those 21 processes. Nothing happens without going through the CPU so it uses cpu cycles at start, plus moving any data it needs from the HDD to the ram. Both of those take time (I don't care how small you are going to say it is), and I want my system booting as fast as possible since I shut it down when not in use.

Its also nice that in your experience photoshop doesn't run well on 2Gb, but it worked fine for me for quite a few years. In fact at least half of that was done with 1Gb and windows XP on my laptop. I only moved up to 2Gb after I installed 7 because there was a good deal.
 
Used to disable services way back, but got to a point in my life that it made no difference to me, so I just install windows and programs and leave the geek stuff to those that play with computers all day long.
 
Biznatch said:
Well since you are going to talk about xp, which as you can see uses substantially less ram, you should talk in percentages. 165 to 122 is a 26.1% decrease in used ram, that is VERY significant.
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Well since you want to talk about percentages, while a 26% decrease may seem significant when comparing the memory used to each other, how significant is it in comparison to total ram which is the metric that really matters? On the VM with 512mb of memory it's a whopping 8.4% change in memory used. If you have 2GB total memory, that's a whopping 2.1% change in memory used. Remember that this is a worst-case scenario with every single windows service enabled. I would say in the real world where not every service is enabled, that's NOT a significant change.
 
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Neb said:
Assuming that number is correct, I would be more interested in what portion of that number is from windows services as opposed to self-installed (or self-inflicted?) programs.
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Well, yes, it is partially due to completely unloading Avira and not just Windows services and processes. *Free* Avira gives no method to completely unload the app so I force it to instead. That is the only 3rd party app I have that autoloads unless you include the ATI CCC. And like I have already said, I only use that bat file in extreme cases and not frequently. It was a game company that taught me to do that because they claimed it improved performance in their game so I adapted it fro running any resource hungry game. They included the bat file with the game and I modified it. I knew as soon as I made that post I would get shat all over and is actually the reason I posted it. I don't care what any of you think is the correct way to run a PC because at the end of the day it is MY PC and I am going to run it how I want and not how any of you think I should.
 
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Azhar said:
By the way, I still don't see any proof to yours and mortonP's claim. Hmm, I wonder why.
Click to expand...

How do I prove that not running X service stops slight pauses in my games? I don't know if they do or not but am making sure they don't. My method comes with no harm done because after a reboot the services are all running as before I ran the bat file so there is zero harm done. The only detriment to my method is that I am wasting a bit of time if the bat file gives no benefit. BFD.

Oh, and I have 4GB of ram on order so am going from 4GB>8GB soon.
 
I'm really not getting this 'wasted ram' thing. You pay good money to put in as much memory as you can, then you do your best to make sure its not used? :D

I've tried all the tricks on my CAD machines, 4gb and 8 gb, and Solidworks loads and runs at the same speed, so I just don't think it's worth the bother.
 
I've got 42 on mine, and it's a fairly barren install of Win7 64. 4 of the processes are related to running FAH, 6 are related to Geforce drivers. I didn't really do much tweaking, only turned off system restore and whatnot since it's useless to me. I'm using a little over a gig of RAM.

Back in the day when I only had 1 gig, I might have cared more about cutting services down to size, but that was back in the day when you had to try hard to get the OS to use 100 megs of RAM
 
Azhar said:
You're still not getting it I see.

We're saying you DON'T have to get more RAM. You DON'T need to throw money at Windows 7 to improve it because whether resources are on automatic or not, it's not doing anything unless it's absolutely needed.

YOU'RE the one who's bitching that enabled and automatic services are sucking up resources and that it needs to be disabled as you see fit. That's simply not true since Windows XP.

But you're absolutely right, it's your computer. Have at it and enjoy your placebo effect.

By the way, I still don't see any proof to yours and mortonP's claim. Hmm, I wonder why.
Click to expand...

The guy (Biznatch) is a well known troll. You can find him promoting that crap from BlackViper's website and all other kinds of "disable superfetch for more FPS!!1" type of stuff. I just hope some newbie doesn't come in here looking for help and then happen to read it thinking it's a good idea, only to cause many headaches without any gain whatsoever.
 
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