Disabling unneeded services

A service is a software application that runs continuously in the background while your computer is on. The Windows operating system has numerous services that run in the background that provide basic functions to the system. Network connectivity, visual support, and external device connectivity such as printer services are all examples of the types of services that the Windows services provide. Each of the services running in the background take up system resources, such as memory and CPU time. Also, during the booting of the operating system,
the service has to be loaded. On most computers, there are nearly 20 services that are loaded upon startup. Of these 20 services, only a handful are system-critical services. All of the others can be disabled. In order to disable a service, first you will need to know more about what the most common services do. Table 8-2 will help you understand what the most common services are, what they do, and if they can be disabled.


Now that you know which services can be disabled and which services are important to your system, you can safely speed up your boot by disabling the extra services using the services management tool.

Before you begin changing your service setup, set a System Restore Point to easily restore your system to an earlier configuration. However, be careful when you restore from restore points. Any applications or files that were created after the system restore point will be deleted when reverting to an earlier restore point.

The Services utility is included in all versions of Windows XP and is hidden away. Do the following to disable a service using the Services utility:

1. Click the Start Menu and select Run. In the text box, type services.msc and click OK. This will start the Services utility.

2. Now that you are in the Services utility, you will see a list of a lot of services on your computer. First, you will need to stop the service that you want to disable. Right-click the service name and select Stop on the pop-up menu.

3. When the service is stopped, right-click the service again and select Properties. Located on the General tab, look for the Startup Type drop-down box. Click the arrow on the drop-down box and select Disabled.

4. Click the OK button and from now on, the system will not start the service any more during boot, speeding up your system start.