windows services and performance

thedude42

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 12, 2004
Messages
477
how many people out there tweak their windows services for gamming or overall system performance? i've been messing around with some benchmarking and found some interesting results from a few different tests. anyone else play around with this?
 
I had played around with the disabling services thing for a while after I read Viper's site. I never measured anything to see if I got a tangible performance increase or if I was looking at placebo. I do know that my machine used up less pysical RAM (as measured by Task Manager).

However, after much discussion here by numerous people (Phoenix86, GrenME, Ranma_Sao), I returned all services to their normal state (luckily, I wrote down all the ones that I had changed) and measured performance this time in several games (frame rate) and aps (time to render). I can't repeat this enough: there was NO change between disabled and enabled services on my machine. Same with page file (no page file, static page file).

IMO, the services are there for a reason and if they don't make any difference, why disable functionality that your machine MIGHT need?

Now, if you are talking about Windows tweaks, sure. I have a bunch of them (notably, static PF size, waittokillservices, clear page file at shutdown, lots more I can't remember).

Cheers.
 
see, that's really wierd, because some friends and i have changed the startup of our sevices to what we need them to be, and besides faster boot times and shutdown times, we did some benchmarking to see what it changed. some benchmarks weren't effected, but we noticed our 3d mark scores were especially effected.

specifically, we had some really wierd experinece with one kid who had a pentium 4 willamette core machine. his in game frame rates actually jumped considerably after changing some services to manual startup rather than automatic, and his windows desktop didn't seem to wait to respond as long when you would click on something. but changing his services dropped his default running processes from over 30 to around 25, and that's what we ended up finding was the biggest effect (since not all services created their own seperate procsses)

mostly i'm curious how many people have really done a comprehensive look at this from purely a p[erformance and functionality view, as there is alot of debate to the benfits and drawbacks of this kind of system tweaking.

personally i have found some of the claims of the benefits and drawbacks to be either misleading or false, and have found what works and what doesn't on my own.
 
thedude42 said:
personally i have found some of the claims of the benefits and drawbacks to be either misleading or false, and have found what works and what doesn't on my own.

That's really what it'll come down to. Experiment on your own and see what happens. If you see a benefit, great. If you don't, well, there you go. Just don't go asking for help when it relates to a service that you've turned off.

I would also submit that getting a better 3dmark score really doesn't do a whole lot of good unless it's backed up by true in-game framerates and app times. There are also those here who would say that even though the desktop might "feel" faster, it might also be placebo as there isn't really a good way to measure that type of response.

Seriously, it comes down to trying things on your machine and seeing if they work to your satisfaction. If they do, fantastic. All you can really do is give testimony to your experience. Mine experience and opinion is that Viper's stuff is neat, it just doesn't do a whole lot under real world situations.

Cheers!
 
Ok, with all the insanely intelligent MS guys lurking, surely we could get a straight answer. I turn off crap till it crashes the holy hell out of my rig, and enable one at a time, till all is well again. With programmers, developers, testers, etc., from MS here as members, none of us should have these problems. Why do we have to go to Black Viper, or anyone else for the answers? Is Optimum OS configuration supposed to be a secret or what? I could give a darn about the company line, how bout some straight scoop?
 
Leadman584 said:
Ok, with all the insanely intelligent MS guys lurking, surely we could get a straight answer. I turn off crap till it crashes the holy hell out of my rig, and enable one at a time, till all is well again. With programmers, developers, testers, etc., from MS here as members, none of us should have these problems. Why do we have to go to Black Viper, or anyone else for the answers? Is Optimum OS configuration supposed to be a secret or what? I could give a darn about the company line, how bout some straight scoop?

Respectfully, thedude42 isn't looking for a debate on the topic, rather he is on an information gathering mission in order to find out just how many people have tweaked their systems and services for gaming and performance as well as their results from said tweaks.

There are quite a few other threads debating the topic with strong opinoins about whether a person should or should not specifically disable services. I have my own experiences, views, and opinoins on the matter, but this thread isn't intended to debate the topic.
 
I have tweaked my machine by disabling unnecessary services and didn't notice a performance increase in gaming / fps. I did notice a shutdown and boot speedup, which makes sense since windows has less to start and stop, but overall performance remained the same on my machine.
 
for me it was like this:

- Learned bout BlackViper ---> Tweaked ---> Crashed

- Thought "it must be my fault" ---> Tweaked some more ---> Crashed worst than before

- Found another tweaking site www.tweaktown.com ----> Tweaked according to them ---> Crashed some more. (by that time i had just registered here)

- Began to think "i must be stupid or something" ---> Tweaked the hell out of my system ---> Crashed on the next reboot.

- Finally, after hearing insights on the truth of "disabling services" by the good people here ---> Never tweaked my services again ---> Have not crashed ever since...
 
chinoquezada said:
for me it was like this:

- Learned bout BlackViper ---> Tweaked ---> Crashed

- Thought "it must be my fault" ---> Tweaked some more ---> Crashed worst than before

- Found another tweaking site www.tweaktown.com ----> Tweaked according to them ---> Crashed some more. (by that time i had just registered here)

- Began to think "i must be stupid or something" ---> Tweaked the hell out of my system ---> Crashed on the next reboot.

- Finally, after hearing insights on the truth of "disabling services" by the good people here ---> Never tweaked my services again ---> Have not crashed ever since...

LOL good one... Its disgusting the amout of crap thats running this Compaq right now. i've got 42 running as it is, and it'll be around sixty if both users are logged on. I guess if things got cleaned a bit, then logging on and off would be quicker, and therefore we wouldn't just switch users. It's all a vicious cycle.
 
I'm not sure how many services you should turn off, but I've found a big one is the indexing service. It allows you to search your hard drive for file faster, but the only way it can do that is indexing your hard drive. That really slows things down. I turn it off at the service level. You can still serach for files, but that's not that slow; how often do you need to that really? ;)
 
I only turn off extra Services like Antivirus etc as well as all Startup items with msconfig.
 
chinoquezada said:
for me it was like this:

- Learned bout BlackViper ---> Tweaked ---> Crashed

- Thought "it must be my fault" ---> Tweaked some more ---> Crashed worst than before

- Found another tweaking site www.tweaktown.com ----> Tweaked according to them ---> Crashed some more. (by that time i had just registered here)

- Began to think "i must be stupid or something" ---> Tweaked the hell out of my system ---> Crashed on the next reboot.

- Finally, after hearing insights on the truth of "disabling services" by the good people here ---> Never tweaked my services again ---> Have not crashed ever since...


I guess you shouldn't tweak what you don't understand then. I have 18 services disabled, and everything's fine. Another guy on here had 25...still stable. Kinda makes you look bad...
 
Disabling the Task Schedular Service could slow your PC right down, cause this service also regulate the Pre-Fetching function.
:D
I experienced a real slowdown, about 2 weeks after I disabled this service. It looks like it still uses the prefetch files in the prefetch directory, but as soon as you delete them, as I do from time to time, no new files are created there=it stays empty....This slows XP real down.
 
I disable some services the messenger service but that is about it. I only disable the ones that are anoying to me. The only benefit I see to disabling services is faster boot time.
 
SJConsultant said:
Respectfully, thedude42 isn't looking for a debate on the topic, rather he is on an information gathering mission in order to find out just how many people have tweaked their systems and services for gaming and performance as well as their results from said tweaks.

There are quite a few other threads debating the topic with strong opinoins about whether a person should or should not specifically disable services. I have my own experiences, views, and opinoins on the matter, but this thread isn't intended to debate the topic.


thank you for the point of clarity on the topic discussion. i purposefully phrased this thread in this way because of another thread that got waaayyyy off topic in that debate (the thread itself wasn't even about windows services!) which i shared the blame in the wayward direction it was headding.

i discovered that alot of people feel very differently about this. from system administrators, to developers, to good ol' power users... i just found it very interesting the range of opinions on this topic and was much more interested to see how many people in this community to use this method in their windows tweaking, as well as how many people stay away from it. were i thinking properly i would have made this a poll, but i'm too lazy to start another thread and figure out how to do that (i'm not too forum-savy).
 
It was not my intent to spark debate. It is frustrating to realize that some of the people with deep, intimate knowledge of MS based OS's, are here.They're advice, and knowledge can be invaluable to most of us. When I see a poster is from Redmond, I'm grabbing a notepad.

As for services, it's best to only dissable only the one's you are absolutely positive you don't need. I have no printer directly connected to 4 of my computers, so dissabling PrintSpooler is a safe bet.

MS made a solid effort to make it's OS's capable of handling nearly every possible contingency. Home and Corporate users alike are pretty well covered. Unfortunately, Everything, for every possible circumstance, is turned on by default. Perhaps a services/registry modification wizard would be in order. You take a relatively short survey of you're needs, and the wizard tweaks out you're rig, to fit you're needs. If these needs change over time, you run the wizard again.

Most of us have enjoyed the experience of tweaking out a rig after a clean install of windows. With multiple RAID0, and RAID5 arrays. My own tweaks, can take more than a day. Image files, and sysprep, are both, you're friends.

www.tweakxp.com and
www.windowsxpatoz.com

These sites offer a little better information on Services/Registry tweaks, than most. The advice you receive, should always be taken with a grain of salt. The advice of anyone, should be taken with a grain. It's you're system, be sure of what you do, and have restore points handy, just in case.
 
arkamw said:
I would also submit that getting a better 3dmark score really doesn't do a whole lot of good unless it's backed up by true in-game framerates and app times. There are also those here who would say that even though the desktop might "feel" faster, it might also be placebo as there isn't really a good way to measure that type of response.
Cheers!

well that was kind of my sticking point. what got me really wondering about the benfits in gamming performance was knowing that in the past, companies have been guilty of playing around with 3dmark scores and their drivers/aplications. cheats in the programs, if you will. but i would think that futuremark (mad onion in the era of 2k1) would not be doing anything wierd according to what processes were running on the system, and even less likely to check what windows services were running. alas, i have experienced over a 2000 3d mark score difference from tweaking services alone, so i have to wonder.... if this kind of drastic performance difference isn't seen in game framerates, why do you see it in 3d mark? and also, does it have more to do with the fact that games are using other parts of your system (network, I/O, sound, etc) and wouldn't that cause a bigger difference in performance?

of course games have their optimised settings and utilise driver specific functions more so probably than a benchmark does. still, in "real world performace" is frame rates the ultimate answer in performance? subtle things like network lag or level load times which don't actually effect game play, but can effect overall game experience don't ever seem to be considered.

i'm still mostly curious to see how many people do this tweaking and how their experience has effected their system overall and gamming specifically.
 
What is the difference between a game played on a PC and same game played on something like a Playstation, where all the EQPT resources is applied to the game, like a CD player for music to the music.

For me the fact that a PC will always multitask, or occupy itself with all sorts of things while you are playing the game, will always be a shortcoming, no matter how fast it is.

:D
If your game flows perfectly in front of you while playing, what is your problem..3D marks etc is all just software that has to be processed ??..Or is'nt it ?? A-HA!... :mad:
 
Well, I just took some screenshots of my services, but I cant link from angelfire. I have 18 that are set to automatic, 2 of which are Symantec Antivirus and also have Wireless Zero Configuration, which is unneeded.

There are several set to manual but only three of them really run.

Most default windows services dont use a lot of CPU cycles, but they build up and can eat a lot of your RAM.

EDIT: here is a link to a page that will show you the services I have running. You could start with these and add anything you need such as Print Spooler or DHCP

http://www.angelfire.com/mo2/jamesb69/services.html

This is from Windows XP with SP2. I am connected to a router so I could go without using a firewall (inbound at least) and set a static IP so I could disable DHCP Client. Having used Win9x and Win2k so much, I disabled themes because they really do nothing for me. I disabled everything else because most of this stuff either doesn't do anything that benefits anybody but the advanced user or else there is some other software I use that does the same thing.

The only things I left in the startup section on msconfig were Mouseware, Itouch, and NvCPL (allows to set the clock of vid card at start up)...

At one point I had did some benchmarks comparing the default settings to my optimmized settings and it was a significant difference for my slow system at least. I am able to run Doom 3 above 30fps on a 1.4 Celeron, a ti4200, and 512 of PC100, so I am a believer in tweaking this stuff (especially if your system is low spec), in which case it can make a difference between a non-playable game and a playable one.
 
I don't know about any increases in preformence but I have both LSP setup and some sevices like remote registry, messenger, clipbook disabled because they open your system up to malice code.I also have automatic updates disabled because the patches are always right the first time. :eek: The one that comes to mind was the a year or two back when someone hacked into the update server... with that I do check updates reg, and before I do anything that may but my system at risk. I will say some of the stuff BV suggests you can turn off you do need to play on any .net based server. I'm running win2k and server2003 by prefence which may make a difference, as xp is too slow when running. The boot seems really fast till you realize that it just waits to load some stuff till you log in.
 
O[H]-Zone said:
I guess you shouldn't tweak what you don't understand then. I have 18 services disabled, and everything's fine. Another guy on here had 25...still stable. Kinda makes you look bad...
Tired of picking on Phoenix86 and GreNME?

Do you have any proof to this supposed stability you claim?
What do you use the tweaked pc for?
18 only MS services or something else?
What services pray tell?

We agree, of course, that tweaking for speed is not worth it right?
 
chinoquezada said:
Tired of picking on Phoenix86 and GreNME?

I don't pick on anybody...I point out when someone posts bad information. Now you just came on here and admitted that you weren't smart enough to tweak your services correctly. Many other people have been able to, myself included. I would submit that this makes you a bad source of information.

chinoquezada said:
Do you have any proof to this supposed stability you claim?

1. I can't imagine what "proof of stability" is...how would one prove that?
2. I don't feel the slightest need to prove anything to a group of people I've proven wrong over and over.
3. Whatever proof I provide will simply be dismissed...no need to go down that road.

The bottom line here? My machine is dead stable, whether you believe me or not.

chinoquezada said:
What do you use the tweaked pc for?

Games, video editing, web page design, making CD's and DVD's...lots of different stuff.

chinoquezada said:
18 only MS services or something else?

18 M$ services

chinoquezada said:
What services pray tell?

I've listed the services I have disabled before; we don't need to go through that again.

chinoquezada said:
We agree, of course, that tweaking for speed is not worth it right?

Yeah, I'd have to say you're not going to get a whole lot from disabling services...if you're looking for more FPS in games, it's probably not going to make a huge difference. The biggest reason (IMHO) is for security. This link has an interview with some M$ guys. It includes this quote:

Q: In future releases will Microsoft disable services by default or expect the user to disble their own?
A; Windows Server 2003 already has most of it's services disabled by default. Reducing the attack surface.

So M$ felt this information was important enough to warrant a Technet article. It says that M$ feels that shutting off services "reduces the attack surface". THat means fewer ways of getting in. Better security.

Now I have some questions for you:

Why wouldn't I disable services? You say you had problems; Ok, which services did you shut off? Very few people on these forums have had problems shutting off services. GreNME mentioned a guy who couldn't defrag (talk about not doing research on which services to shut down!). And a few weeks ago, I saw one other guy. That's it...three people. GreNME predicted problems when installing SP2 when services were disabled.
It was a load of tripe; nobody had problems.
GreNME says disabling services will lead to instability.
It's a load of tripe, no instability here.
Phoenix86 and GreNME both said diabling services won't improve security.
This M$ technet article says that's tripe.
So, wrapping up everything we've learned:

Use sources you trust. I've proven GreNME and Phoenix86 wrong time and again, so I don't trust what they say. Neither should you.
Use common sense. Do you really want a service running on your machine that "enables remote users to modify registry settings on this computer"?
I don't want anyone modifying my registry remotely.
I don't need, use or want that service.
I suffer no negative results from shutting it down.
It's one less way for my machine to be owned.
Why on Earth woudn't I shut it down? Because GreNME and Phoenix86 say I shouldn't? After I've proven each of them wrong many times?
I can't believe this is even an issue.
 
O[H]-Zone said:
I don't pick on anybody...I point out when someone posts bad information. Now you just came on here and admitted that you weren't smart enough to tweak your services correctly. Many other people have been able to, myself included. I would submit that this makes you a bad source of information.



1. I can't imagine what "proof of stability" is...how would one prove that?
2. I don't feel the slightest need to prove anything to a group of people I've proven wrong over and over.
3. Whatever proof I provide will simply be dismissed...no need to go down that road.

The bottom line here? My machine is dead stable, whether you believe me or not.



Games, video editing, web page design, making CD's and DVD's...lots of different stuff.



18 M$ services



I've listed the services I have disabled before; we don't need to go through that again.



Yeah, I'd have to say you're not going to get a whole lot from disabling services...if you're looking for more FPS in games, it's probably not going to make a huge difference. The biggest reason (IMHO) is for security. This link has an interview with some M$ guys. It includes this quote:

Q: In future releases will Microsoft disable services by default or expect the user to disble their own?
A; Windows Server 2003 already has most of it's services disabled by default. Reducing the attack surface.

So M$ felt this information was important enough to warrant a Technet article. It says that M$ feels that shutting off services "reduces the attack surface". THat means fewer ways of getting in. Better security.

Now I have some questions for you:

Why wouldn't I disable services? You say you had problems; Ok, which services did you shut off? Very few people on these forums have had problems shutting off services. GreNME mentioned a guy who couldn't defrag (talk about not doing research on which services to shut down!). And a few weeks ago, I saw one other guy. That's it...three people. GreNME predicted problems when installing SP2 when services were disabled.
It was a load of tripe; nobody had problems.
GreNME says disabling services will lead to instability.
It's a load of tripe, no instability here.
Phoenix86 and GreNME both said diabling services won't improve security.
This M$ technet article says that's tripe.
So, wrapping up everything we've learned:

Use sources you trust. I've proven GreNME and Phoenix86 wrong time and again, so I don't trust what they say. Neither should you.
Use common sense. Do you really want a service running on your machine that "enables remote users to modify registry settings on this computer"?
I don't want anyone modifying my registry remotely.
I don't need, use or want that service.
I suffer no negative results from shutting it down.
It's one less way for my machine to be owned.
Why on Earth woudn't I shut it down? Because GreNME and Phoenix86 say I shouldn't? After I've proven each of them wrong many times?
I can't believe this is even an issue.

:rolleyes:
 
OldPueblo said:
Wow, thanks a lot for the intelligent discourse; your influx of ideas and thoughts on this matter can only widen the scope of discussion. I've provided links, personal observations and invoked common sense. You posted a rolleyes. Your mommy must be so proud!
 
There are times and places for disabling services, but in my eyes, its more for security reasons and not performance.

Please let's not take this to a flamefest like so many other threads when it does not need to be. I am quite interested in the information people post in response to the OPs request and would not appreciate it one bit for this thread to get locked.
 
thedude42 said:
how many people out there tweak their windows services for gamming or overall system performance? i've been messing around with some benchmarking and found some interesting results from a few different tests. anyone else play around with this?
When I disable a service, it is because there is no way I'd need it or use it.

When I stop a service, it is because I don't need it right now, however if Windows needs it, it will start it on it's own and then stop it when done (supposedly). An example is the IMAPI service for cd burners. When set to manual, it still works just as it would if set to Automatic.

Now, why go through that in the first place? I have 1GB of ram with no pagefile. When playing BFV, with virus scanner running, motherboard monitor, ventrilo/teamspeak2, etc. there are some maps that will make my system run out of memory. By disabling/stopping some services, it'll free up a small amount of memory that may just allow me to get by. There are no speed performance benifits, however I'm banking to keep my services as slim (memory allocation wise) as possible. Like usual, I'm probably alone here on this viewpoint.
 
SJConsultant said:
There are times and places for disabling services, but in my eyes, its more for security reasons and not performance.

I agree 100%. There might be performance gains, but they're not large. IMHO, it's for security.

Fark_Maniac said:
When I disable a service, it is because there is no way I'd need it or use it.

Absolutely. If you don't need it, disable it. If you like the idea that it frees some RAM and saves some processor cycles, great. If the added security is what attracts you, that's great too.

Fark_Maniac said:
I'm probably alone here on this viewpoint.

Hell no; I agree!

jamesrb:
Wow, I wouldn't even have thought of disabling DHCP client service...are you set up with a statip IP? Nvidia Display Driver Service either...what does that do? If it's disabled, it can't be "needed"...
 
Bender_Unit_22 said:
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

good site for the explanation of the services

The best site, he's done his homework for sure.

Also, TweakHound's got a site up, and provides his TweakPack, which is a set of registry patches that will enable/disable services according to what you use the machine for, and your machine's configuration.

I know I'll probably come up as a n00b, but I've been on this site since at least 1996 or '97, and been lurking the forums at least that long--just so you know I'm no complete n00blet. All that so I can say this:

I've done these tweaks for close to 3 years now, and have had no issues or problems with doing so. On all machines I've applied the tweaks to, I've seen a typical speed increase of 5-10%, with the real bonuses being turning off services that open up my machines to instrusions. I've done this to my computers (4 so far), my wife's machines (laptop and store machine), and at least 10-15 other machines, all with no adverse effects. All machines stable, quick, and reliable.

So I have to say that doing services tweaks aren't a bad thing at all, and at the very least give a benefit of better security, with the added extra of some speed.

So, I sez "check 'em out!" ;)
 
O[H]-Zone said:
Wow, thanks a lot for the intelligent discourse; your influx of ideas and thoughts on this matter can only widen the scope of discussion. I've provided links, personal observations and invoked common sense. You posted a rolleyes. Your mommy must be so proud!

I'll pull out that emoticon again if I have to. Now...

99esimmer2.jpg

SIMMAH DOWN NAH!

All you've demonstrated time and time again is that the way you use your machine, the software you install, etc., has so far not caused side effects (as far as you can tell) with the computers under your influence. You are not the majority and most likely all your results will be the same because they all have a common factor. You. However everybody else is not you and doesn't have your software and useage patterns. Thats the reason for this thread. Note that others that have participated in the other threads about this were nice enough to either not post or post and keep it focused. So now that you have participated and put your two cents in, you are done and have no other reason to post in this thread right? After all, this isn't a debate thread.
 
OldPueblo said:
All you've demonstrated time and time again is that the way you use your machine, the software you install, etc., has so far not caused side effects (as far as you can tell) with the computers under your influence. You are not the majority and most likely all your results will be the same because they all have a common factor. You. However everybody else is not you and doesn't have your software and useage patterns. Thats the reason for this thread. Note that others that have participated in the other threads about this were nice enough to either not post or post and keep it focused. So now that you have participated and put your two cents in, you are done and have no other reason to post in this thread right? After all, this isn't a debate thread.
Hmmm...got anything to add about services, or is your wind-blowing complete? So far you've posted twice in this thread. Both times those posts were directed at me, and had nothing to do with services, the original subject of this thread. Don't like what I say? Don't read it...but I have as much right to post here as anyone...you included.
 
Okay, the idea behind QuackViper-ish disabling of services is to disable them in order to save system resources, thus increasing performance, right?

Well, looked at that way, in the simplest of terms, it sounds like a great idea. However, Windows doesn't work that way, not when it comes to services. In fact, this line of thinking is only partially correct and is based more on the idea (read: the FUD) that Windows is by default "too bloated" or isn't "streamlined" for performance. In addition, it has equally been assigned the same value as modules in Linux, which is a lot closer, but still somewhat of a misnomer.

But I'm not here to argue that. It's really subjective and really depends on what you want to use to define "too much."

Services are, as is claimed, processes that run in the background and wait for system calls to act. Some of them use CPU time, but not all of them. They all use memory, but many of them do not, in fact, use the RAM—and this is where the claims of resource-hogging begin to miss the point: lots of these 'processes' simply load .dll files that either wait in system memory taking up a few kilobytes, or some of them are waiting in the virtual memory, taking up no RAM at all and not polling the CPU for processor time. It is not well-known by many, but even a good portion of the NTOSKRNL.EXE—or, rather, many of the .dll files the kernel calls—remains paged during most system use.

"So, what are you saying?" you may be asking. Well, I'm saying that many of the services aren't taking up the resources that some (like QuackViper) would have you think. But there's more...

I'm sure plenty of people realize that our modern 'multitasking' operating systems are not actually performing more than one operation at a time. If you believe they do, here's a revelation: current x86 CPUs do not perform more than one operation at a time (no, even Intel's HT doesn't). Instead, operating systems have evolved to work as consistently and effectively as possible to have processes share CPU time between each other, so that no single process monopolizes CPU time until its task is done. In fact, in any modern x86 OS, when a process does so (monopolizes CPU cycles), the OS will lock up or cease responding—in other words, there is a problem when processes don't release their allotted CPU time. On a modern OS, each process only polls the CPU when it is 'supposed to' use it, which means a process can be on and 'running' yet still not be using CPU cycles, due to the lower priority and the kernel itself allowing the necessary programs to poll the CPU.

And this means?

It means that not only do programs need to be on and running, but they have to be telling the kernel itself to give it priority to ask the CPU for cycles in order to take up system resources. What it also means is that any program that is written with a modicum of professionalism and runs as a service will not take up resources or unnecessary CPU cycles when not directly in use. This includes, whether you love or hate Microsoft and their OS, the system services included in the OS. In other words, your performance should not be hampered by the extra system services you may believe you don't use (whether you know if you do or not): Microsoft actually designed the system to work this way. For those who are familiar, Linux is really no different in this regard, even though the way things are set up are somewhat different (though intrinsically the same). Just a hint as to what I'm talking about: there's a reason that under the system properties in the Advanced tab under performance has a section where you can give higher precedence to background processes or running programs—it is one of the many kernel switches that allow for the controlling of how and when the services are allowed to call the CPU for cycles.

"But what about other non-system services, not made by Microsoft?" you may ask. Well, I'd like to say that it shouldn't be a problem, but anyone who has watched O&O or DiskKeeper defragging programs or Symantec's Norton A/V (or any other various and sundry programs) taking up loads of CPU power when running in the background, this is not always so. Would disabling these things increase performance? That's not such an easy answer, because killing an antivirus makes your system less secure, and if you feel you have a need for one of the more robust defragmenter programs, then you are obviously interested in having your disks "in order" and not having them so could theoretically hamper performance after a few weeks of heavy reading/writing to disks. Ultimately, it would be your call, but I wouldn't suggest it unless you are seeing a problem (if it ain't broke, don't fix it).

Ultimately, it will always come down to your personal choice. There is never a lack of people who claim any 'tweak' brings forth wonderful performance and/or security increases, and some with flamethrowers blaring (like O[H]-Zone's ignorance). The thing is, it has never been proven to increase performance, and I have made open invitations to anyone who wishes to try to attempt to 'hack' a computer I set up with a default service configuration, with a measly reward of $500 US, which some (like O[H]-Zone) have declined with excuses and backpedaling. Since accessing a service would require prior authentication and permisions, a machine would have to already be 0wn3d to have a service be an attack vector (with the only exception to date being the RPC/Blaster debacle).

A warning, though: QuackViper has misinformed many with his poor paraphrasing of sources he can't even be bothered to cite when "explaining." For example: Secondary Logon Service does not allow another person to log on to your computer without your knowledge. A logon must be authenticated with the proper permissions to begin with, and Windows XP does not support concurrent sessions (sadly) to begin with—this is not an attack vector, it cannot be compromised without proper authentication, period (no one has ever proven otherwise). Very much the same applies to remote registry (I'll give $1000 US to the first person who could compromise even my XP Home laptop with that service as the entry point).

If people have a problem with the built-in "explanations" to the services when using the MMC window (which is, by the way, the only place QuackViper got his information), then I agree. I'm working on trying to find a way to better version of explanations for the services, what they do, and how they work with the system as a whole and other services individually (*cough*Ranma_Sao*cough*). I know I've said that before, but aside from real life taking more precedence right now, real research takes a lot more time than QuackViper put into it when only a few people are doing the work.

I realize that there are and will still be plenty of people who disagree with this. All I'd say is do your own homework on how modern operating systems work, and I can even suggest a few good books if you're willing to check them out (and most aren't by Microsoft Press, either ;) ). In simplest terms, all I can say about the issue is that it just isn't as simple as the "solutions" like QuackViper try to make it out to be, and you can very likely cause more harm than good if you aren't careful.
 
damn dude. I wanna be just like you when i grow up... :D

Now seriously... Thats about the best explanation i've seen on how services work.
Take heed people, the truth has been spoken...
 
chinoquezada said:
damn dude. I wanna be just like you when i grow up... :D

Now seriously... Thats about the best explanation i've seen on how services work.
Take heed people, the truth has been spoken...
I'm curious...do you have a small brown circle on your nose?
 
O[H]-Zone said:
jamesrb:
Wow, I wouldn't even have thought of disabling DHCP client service...are you set up with a statip IP? Nvidia Display Driver Service either...what does that do? If it's disabled, it can't be "needed"...

Yeah, I sit behind a router (for the firewall) and set up a static IP to disable DHCP...

As far as the Nvidia service, I have no idea what it does. The latest series of Nvidia drivers install 3 apps that run at startup and this one service. Disabling them had no loss in functionality or performance except for one called NnCplDaemon, which was needed to allow for overclocking at each boot...
 
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