services

[lynchknot]

Following a guide as to what is safe to disable in "services" rendered my PC useless - I had to system restore because I forgot which services I disabled. Whould it be safe to say, whatever is set to "auto" and not active - could/should be set to manual?

[zipp51]

Hi Lynch,which guide did you use?I used the Black Viper's and he is pretty acurate and informative about the choices.

[lynchknot]

Hey zipp, I forgot. It was a recent post somewhere. I have to be aware that not everyone plays games or uses trillian - I think a settng for that was also turned off. I also lost my connection all together.

[FastGame]

I agree with zipp51 , Black Viper is the best :D

Originally posted by lynchknot
Whould it be safe to say, whatever is set to "auto" and not active - could/should be set to manual?
I would say yes, that way if it's called on then it will start. Also just because a service is Auto started doesn't mean it's sitting there using ram even if it's inactive.

[lynchknot]

How about setting everything to manual - then see what turns on?

[Conan]

Originally posted by lynchknot
Following a guide as to what is safe to disable in "services" rendered my PC useless - I had to system restore because I forgot which services I disabled. Whould it be safe to say, whatever is set to "auto" and not active - could/should be set to manual?

From experience, its best to only tinker with just a few Services, those that your are really familiar with. I've tried Black Viper's suggestions way back when XP was new and had to System Restore my way back too. The performance gains you won't even notice them if you've got a decent amount of RAM (256 and up).

[lynchknot]

Following the table on his site, one by one, I started out having 32 processes running. I now have 31 running! - :p

[zipp51]

I've got 39 processes running.A lot are just bells and whistles like style xp,sysmetrics(large clock runninng on desktop),cool mon,MBM(motherboard monitor),etc.I could get rid of at least 7 just from those mentioned but everything is running fine.I only have a few Black Viper tweaks.I agree with Conan about system performance with 256mb ram and up,so actually if your looking for a perfomance boost with XP then adding an additional 256mb to that would give you the extra kick for,say, graphic or audio intense usage.As far as putting all your services in manual ,I would't do that because some need to be in automatic.I tinkered with all of them and what I did was open each service up and read the dependencies and try and figure if I need it or not.Also creating a restore point before you do this is wise as mentioned.:)

[FastGame]

I agree with what has been said about Ram and XP performance, the more the better.

It's important too note that Black Vipers guide is not so much about XP performance as it is about application performance & priority, the guide also takes into account CPU usage.

Black Viper gives a very good description of Services, the need of such Service and it's default setting. Any Service that doesn't need too be set for Auto can be (not saying should be) set too Manual and will be started if called upon, it's the Disable setting that can cause problems.

If you have a fast CPU, GFX & lots of fast Ram then it's probley best not to mess with things much. For those who don't, Tweaking can/may be useful.

[Stripe]

I agree that BlackViper (http://www.blackviper.com) is a good place to go. I like the site because you can click on the service and it gives a description of what it does.

I would recommend not to disable services if your not familiar with it. Disabling or even setting some services to Disable/Manual (such as Remote Procedure Call) will render the PC useless as lynchknot found.