To Turn Off Or Not Turn Off Services

[Widow 0]

There were the beginnings of a decent discussion about this last week but it became a kind of personal vendetta between some folks. It got me to thinking though and as I just redid my system I thought I would share my results.

 

Before Turning Off Some Services

Mem Usage Handles Threads Processes

209608 3121 216 23

 

Services Turned Off

Computer Browser

Diskeeper

Messenger

Print Spooler

Remote Registry Service

RunAs Service

Server

 

After Turning Off the Above Services

Mem Usage Handles Threads Processes

207052 2897 198 20

 

While the memory savings were not huge(a little over 2%) the reduction of system handles becomes more prevelant(almost 8%) and the reduction of system threads beomes almost 9%.

 

Now while on a system with adequate memory(256mg or more) this will probably not be noticed but on lower end systems this savings could become much more important expecially when trying to run some memory/thread hog applications...ie Word 2000 and the like.

 

There are a few other services that I could have turned off but with 1 gig of system ram, I frankly don't see the point. This is not an endorsement of any point of view save my own; just something I wanted to know for myself......

[Widow 0]

I tend to keep runing the following services:

a few I could probably live without, but then I have memory to spare.

 

COM+ Event System (Pretty much essential)

 

Distributed Link Tracking Client(Can be turned off but the way I move stuff around on my drives its safer for me to leave this on)

 

DNS Client (Pretty much essential)

 

Event Log (Not essential but great for troubleshooting)

 

Logical Disk Manager (Not essential, but I have many partitions and turning this off seems the precipitate the system wanted to rearrange drive letters for me...)

 

NAV Alert (Norton, gotta have it)

 

NAV Auto-Protect (Norton, gotta have it)

 

Network Connections (Pretty much essential)

 

Plug and Play (Not essential but I tend to feel safer leaving this on)

 

Protected Storage (Another non essential but I leave it on just the same)

 

Remote Procedure Call (RPC) (Pretty much essential)

 

Removable Storage (Pretty much essential)

 

Security Accounts Manager (Not essential but logons seem to take longer with it off so I leave it on)

 

SSC Monitor (Third party cache manager, essential for me)

 

System Event Notification (Pretty much essential)

 

TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Service (Pretty much essential)

 

Windows Management Instrumentation (Pretty much essential)

 

Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions (Seems to come on whether manual or automatic.)

 

Workstation (Pretty much essential)

 

Of all the services I have on I set them all to automatic, some were set to manual but would come on anyway. In order to speed up the windows logon its just easier to set them to automatic.

 

BTW. I tried SHS's tweak and so far it seems to work as advertised. I'll keep you posted if anything untold happens with it.

[DrPizza 0]

Quote:

Originally posted by Widow
I tend to keep runing the following services:
a few I could probably live without, but then I have memory to spare.

COM+ Event System (Pretty much essential)

If you're using COM+.

Quote:

Distributed Link Tracking Client(Can be turned off but the way I move stuff around on my drives its safer for me to leave this on)

Only functions within a domain. If you're not using a Win2K Domain, it does nothing.

Quote:

DNS Client (Pretty much essential)

Event Log (Not essential but great for troubleshooting)

That you can't stop it when it's running should highlight that you shouldn't turn it off.

Quote:

Logical Disk Manager (Not essential, but I have many partitions and turning this off seems the precipitate the system wanted to rearrange drive letters for me...)

Hm, it shouldn't, unless you change the drives/partitions in the system. This service watches for changes to the disk configuration and responds to them (and has some roles in dynamic disk management). If you're using normal partitions and don't regularly change them then this service should be redundant (except for when you're configuring partitions in the disk manager thing).

Quote:

Plug and Play (Not essential but I tend to feel safer leaving this on)

This is indeed essential; MS says that disabling it can result in system instability, and they are not lying. Again, the fact that you can't stop it once it's running should draw your attention to its importance.

Quote:

Protected Storage (Another non essential but I leave it on just the same)

P-Store probably isn't needed, though some things like certain parts of IIS require it.

Quote:

Remote Procedure Call (RPC) (Pretty much essential)

Entirely essential.

Quote:

Removable Storage (Pretty much essential)

Nope. This is only useful if you have CD or tape jukeboxes.

Quote:

Security Accounts Manager (Not essential but logons seem to take longer with it off so I leave it on)

Disabling this can seriously ruin your day, as a number of services require it to be running in order to work correctly (though they don't list it as a dependency). Again, the inability to stop it once running suggests it's more important than an average service.

Quote:

System Event Notification (Pretty much essential)

Nope. It's required for some things like detecting if your network cable is unplugged, but it's by no means required.

Quote:

TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Service (Pretty much essential)

If you're using NetBIOS, this is essential.

Quote:

Windows Management Instrumentation (Pretty much essential)

Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions (Seems to come on whether manual or automatic.)

Yes, these two go together, and should be left alone.

Quote:

Workstation (Pretty much essential)

If you're using networking, yes.

Quote:

Of all the services I have on I set them all to automatic, some were set to manual but would come on anyway. In order to speed up the windows logon its just easier to set them to automatic.

This doesn't figure.

Leaving them set to manual means that they'll only start if and when needed. Most of them are unrelated to login. Leaving them manual reduces the boot time, because they're not loaded until some time later. This is particularly true for some of the things like, for instance, the WMI Driver Extensions service, which are used internally by the OS more than by the user.

[Widow 0]

Thanks for the info Dr Pizza.

 

Most of the services I knew about although I am by no means an expert.

(more like a tinkerer with a penchant for tinkering too much and crashing things once in a while)

 

Though I didn't realize that Distributed Link Tracking Client client only functions within a domain.

 

I have learned not to be overly aggressive when turning things off, even though you should be able too. I tend to install and remove lots of apps(part of that tinkering thing again) to see what they do and if they are worth using.

 

It seems that if you using adequate memory(256meg or more) you can probably leave most things as Win2k sets them without much worry.(though I would still turn off Messenger, RunAs Service, and Remote Registry Service for security reasons and that I would never use them)

The most benifit of really shutting things down that I can see is if you are running 128meg or less and trying to run win2k; then shutting down every possible service would make sense as you would save a bit of memory and save on some system threads being used. Anyway I appreciate everyones input it was informative and interesting.