What services do you disable in WinXP?

[jbarr]

I know there are many sites that describe what Windwos XP services are essential and optional, but I was wondering if seasoned SageTV users have any suggestions as to an "ideal" strategy to eliminating unneeded Windows XP services. I have "stock" Windows XP Pro installed in my HTPC, and it runs lots and lots of services by default. It's a beefy-enough box that I really don't need to worry about trimming CUP cycles, but if there are non-essential services, why have them running? The box needs to be a networked, video processing PC.

Any suggestions?

[malore]

The guide I used and like seems to be down, but a bunch of sites have google cached it. Here is one http://www.codecavalier.com/blackvip...servicecfg.htm

[jbarr]

Excellent! I'll go through the list and disable the relevent ones.

Thansk!

[blade]

Be careful when following guides that "improve performance". I went through and disabled quite a few services that numerous guides agreed were hogs and it actually slowed my machine down instead of speeding it up.

[briands]

Would it be possible for someone to write a registry file (or some other config utility) that would be a base configuration for a Sage machine (maybe 1 version for server and 1 for client)? I realize everyone has different hardware, so it may be limited, but I'd think there would be a base package to install immediately after a windows fresh install and prior to any hardware installation.

Just a thought.

[malore]

Originally Posted by blade

Be careful when following guides that "improve performance". I went through and disabled quite a few services that numerous guides agreed were hogs and it actually slowed my machine down instead of speeding it up.

Really? Based on benchmarks or what?

My opinion of the extra services is that they waste memory more than anything else (plus more security holes), so if you have plenty of memory they probably have little effect on system performace, but if memory is tight, disabling them would reduce the need for virtual memory, thus potentially increasing system performace. If the task manager is to be believed, none of them use much CPU time.

[blade]

Originally Posted by malore

Really? Based on benchmarks or what?

My opinion of the extra services is that they waste memory more than anything else (plus more security holes), so if you have plenty of memory they probably have little effect on system performace, but if memory is tight, disabling them would reduce the need for virtual memory, thus potentially increasing system performace. If the task manager is to be believed, none of them use much CPU time.

Based on just using the system. I totally agree some services are useless and can be disabled; however, many guides suggest disabling a lot of services that they probably shouldn't.

Most measure "performance" as boot time or memory consumed. They don't actually measure real performance. I once read a very well written article that explained the drawbacks to disabling many of the services that other guides suggest turning off. It explained how turning off certain services speed up boot times and reduced memory usage, but caused the system to perform slower because those services loaded certain things at bootup that increased performance in windows. So basically turning off those services decreased boot times and reduced memory usage at the expense of performance once windows was loaded. It has been a long time so I don't recall much about the article.

I tried following several guides (not the one you posted) and each time I ended up with very poor performance when trying to browse network shares and my recordings started stuttering. This was on a really low powered machine, which is why I was trying to streamline windows.

[GKusnick]

In my opinion this falls into the "if it ain't broke" category. If you're not knowledgeable enough to figure out for yourself what a service does or whether it's safe to disable, then you probably shouldn't mess with it. The farther your system deviates from a stock Windows installation, the more likely you are to run into problems that nobody has ever seen before and nobody knows how to fix. Personally, I would rather run as close as possible to the config that the Sage devs use, because I know that config is well tested and well supported. Any deviations I make from stock config in the form of custom STVs and plugins are things I fully understand and can troubleshoot myself if need be.

[GTwannabe]

The only service I disable is Universal Plug 'n Play. Other services that I don't need running are changed from Automatic to Manual startup.

[malore]

Originally Posted by blade

I once read a very well written article that explained the drawbacks to disabling many of the services that other guides suggest turning off. It explained how turning off certain services speed up boot times and reduced memory usage, but caused the system to perform slower because those services loaded certain things at bootup that increased performance in windows.

Sounds like an interesting read. I've always wondered that if increased performance was really so easy to get by simple tweaks, wouldn't microsoft already use them.

[Mark SS]

If you want to eek a bit extra from a system, be it reducing resource usage or improving boot time, start off by looking at nlite to minimise the OS installation and add the majority of known tweaks from day one.

Get a decent defragger like PerfectDisk, delete your page file after installation and run a smart placement defrag which will move the majority of files used at boot to the fastest portion of the drive. When done, enable the page file and fix the size so it occupies a contiguos section of disk.