Windows Vista: Disabling Services

[eilegz]

thanks a lor a XP version of this list would be nice too, but anyways good job ^^:: making vista less resource hog

[PiracyX]

This is a great list! I will be playing around with vLite soon and removing some of these pretty useless services. Thanks again slimy. Btw this should be pinned.

[mongoloid]

I can no longer choose to have a program open with administrator priviledges, anyone know how to fix that? :no:

[redeemed]

I might be getting Vista Home Basic or Premium later in a few weeks. I'm sure this list will come in handy. Thanks Slimy! Much appreciated and keep up the good job. :yes:

Cheers :D

[Lorraine]

I can no longer choose to have a program open with administrator priviledges, anyone know how to fix that? :no:

If you have the secondary log service disabled, enable it. That SHOULD fix it.

One other thing I've noticed is that disabling the 'SL UI Notification service' breaks the control panel on home premium at least. So I'd advise people to set that to automatic if you need the CP for anything. :)

[eilegz]

now that i have vista im trying this right now :D

[Malisk]

Why set services to disabled at all, unless they're set to automatic, that is? :unsure:

Services set to "Manual" will just start if the OS needs them anyway, so if it didn't they won't start anyway, and won't consume any resources.

"Disabled" makes it so Vista can't start them even if it needs to, but would that really be a smart thing to do? Hmm...

Anyway, SuperFetch, the Windows Search Indexer, and NTFS Defrag seems to be by far the most resource demanding ones. However, disabling SuperFetch may impact application launch times, disabling Search Indexing wouldn't let Vista update for "instant searches", and no NTFS defrag would make your drive more defragmented over time unless you use an alternative.

[stockwiz]

after a couple hours of troubleshooting trying to find out why there was a 30-45 second lag during my boot time I noticed it was caused by the "workstation" service. When I disabled that the problem was solved. I'm on a wireless network so it was the last service I thought of disabling.

[freak_power]

Why set services to disabled at all, unless they're set to automatic, that is? :unsure:

Services set to "Manual" will just start if the OS needs them anyway, so if it didn't they won't start anyway, and won't consume any resources.

"Disabled" makes it so Vista can't start them even if it needs to, but would that really be a smart thing to do? Hmm...

Anyway, SuperFetch, the Windows Search Indexer, and NTFS Defrag seems to be by far the most resource demanding ones. However, disabling SuperFetch may impact application launch times, disabling Search Indexing wouldn't let Vista update for "instant searches", and no NTFS defrag would make your drive more defragmented over time unless you use an alternative.

SuperFetch doesn't do a **** because almost no user have same pattern of using computer, unless you're a grandmother who opens Solitaire, favorite web site, and email everyday. Hard drives nowdays are so fast, especially if you own raid or single WD 10000RPM HDD. Also similar for ReadyBoost. It's totally useless from my point of view unless you run system with 512MB of RAM. If you have 2GB or more, just force damn paging to memory, and disable readyBoost, or at least set like only 256MB for paging on hard drive.

Windows Search is the most horrible i have seen in my life. It's crap, and based on wrong idea...As I said before Windows Search is an outcome of the attempt to fix poor Windows folder organization and its File System.

[stockwiz]

Why set services to disabled at all, unless they're set to automatic, that is? :unsure:

Services set to "Manual" will just start if the OS needs them anyway, so if it didn't they won't start anyway, and won't consume any resources.

"Disabled" makes it so Vista can't start them even if it needs to, but would that really be a smart thing to do? Hmm...

Anyway, SuperFetch, the Windows Search Indexer, and NTFS Defrag seems to be by far the most resource demanding ones. However, disabling SuperFetch may impact application launch times, disabling Search Indexing wouldn't let Vista update for "instant searches", and no NTFS defrag would make your drive more defragmented over time unless you use an alternative.

there are some services that start running that aren't needed even on manual ... a few I can think off the top of my head are the ones that deal with dial up or phone connections, like telephony and remote access connection manager; others include SSDP discovery service and shell hardware detection. There are a few others too.

[mackiemesser]

Hi,

after tweaking my services I had the problem that vista did show only an empty list in the 'previous versions' tab of the file object properties. The shadow copies itself were existent and working ok. The restore point functionality was there. To solve the problem I had to enable (and start) the 'TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper' service . So be careful when turning of this service

klaus

[Aero Ultimate]

Hi,

after tweaking my services I had the problem that vista did show only an empty list in the 'previous versions' tab of the file object properties. The shadow copies itself were existent and working ok. The restore point functionality was there. To solve the problem I had to enable (and start) the 'TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper' service . So be careful when turning of this service

klaus

That's odd - the NetBios helper shouldn't have anything to do with Shadow Copies.

I'll check back this.

[crico98765]

How do I disable the remote control sensor on the front of my laptop? My brother always messes with my computer with his control while I'm using it. I looked at all of the active services and none of them say anything about a control or infrared.

[raskren]

How do I disable the remote control sensor on the front of my laptop? My brother always messes with my computer with his control while I'm using it. I looked at all of the active services and none of them say anything about a control or infrared.

Disable the infrared device in device manager, or put tape over the sensor, or tell your brother to grow the **** up.

[crico98765]

Disable the infrared device in device manager, or put tape over the sensor, or tell your brother to grow the **** up.

There is no infrared device. What other device could it be under? It goes right through my finger so I'm guessing it goes through tape.

[TheRPG]

Well, don't wanna add you more pain as I can feel digging those infos up from knowledge allready is quite an job, but adding those disabled you suggest will damage and crash multible windows functions quite well. I know some are liberately down as this is service tweaking, but that will also bring down other system which there isn't clue in here.

First probably comes in mind is router connections and IP Helper is not only for IPv6 as of my knowledge. Might be wrong, but shutting it down will not do much good to detecting. Also 'Function Discovery Provider Host - Default: Manual (Started)' definedly ain't safe to turn off and Event log? uhh don't much no when you do that you cannot even turn it back on again. after 1 reboot it hits access denied in your screen. Although current system it does it anyway after some period unless microsoft fixes it.

I'll bet none of those you mentioned there were took to real test, but simply copied from Windows XP style what there could be turned on this is not same in Vista as many of those controls alot of more things than in XP. Even while yes some are simply renamed hehe..

[Martyn]

Awesome guide (Y)

I am glad someone whipped one up for Vista, as I found the one for XP quite handy.

[lover]

Thanks of great list, although someone doesn't like disable services, not me.

I diasable as many as 30 services, (I don't use that computer to surf internet)

NOW, boot up time of my computer (HP M2006AP, pentium-M 725 1.6G, 1GB RAM, 4200rpm/60G) is as fast as 37 second. and ram useage is about 310MB after 3 minutes of startup.

I haven't met any problems. and I will keep on disable as many as services.

Thanks of your attention

[bjoswald]

There are plenty of guides that discuss disabling "unnecessary" services, some of which are right here on Neowin. I'm not going to bother linking them here, as I'm sure you're adept enough to manipulate Google. But if you are curious enough, I suggest setting them to Manual rather than Disabled. Works for me.

[ViperAFK]

SuperFetch doesn't do a **** because almost no user have same pattern of using computer, unless you're a grandmother who opens Solitaire, favorite web site, and email everyday. Hard drives nowdays are so fast, especially if you own raid or single WD 10000RPM HDD. Also similar for ReadyBoost. It's totally useless from my point of view unless you run system with 512MB of RAM. If you have 2GB or more, just force damn paging to memory, and disable readyBoost, or at least set like only 256MB for paging on hard drive.

Windows Search is the most horrible i have seen in my life. It's crap, and based on wrong idea...As I said before Windows Search is an outcome of the attempt to fix poor Windows folder organization and its File System.

How is windows search a bad idea???? It's isntant search similar to spotlight on OSX, very useful to many people regardless of file system structure.

And most people probably do have somewhat of a pattern, the first thing I usually do it open a web browser/im/media player. and superfetch constantly adapts and it does more than just preload certain programs, it is much better than the old style memory management iif you have a lot of ram regardless of "pattern"

I game heavily on my vista pc and I have only disabled tablet PC and windows Defender, and I have no real difference in fps going from xp to vista so it doesn't really make much of a difference at all for me, my pc usually idles at 0-1% cpu usage.

and lastly, do not disable the Readyboost service, because it also controls the readyboot function which speeds up boot time.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

SuperFetch doesn't do a **** because almost no user have same pattern of using computer, unless you're a grandmother who opens Solitaire, favorite web site, and email everyday. Hard drives nowdays are so fast, especially if you own raid or single WD 10000RPM HDD.

You obviously don't even know what SuperFetch does, as that has nothing to do with its value. Further, you're completely wrong about hard drives. The difference in random I/O between a 10,000RPM hard drive and RAM is several orders of magnitude.

Also similar for ReadyBoost. It's totally useless from my point of view unless you run system with 512MB of RAM. If you have 2GB or more, just force damn paging to memory, and disable readyBoost, or at least set like only 256MB for paging on hard drive.

I doubt many people with lots of RAM are using ReadyBoost, but it is helpful for 512MB systems as you say. "force paging to memory" makes no sense, the very notion of paging requires a disk.

Windows Search is the most horrible i have seen in my life. It's crap, and based on wrong idea...As I said before Windows Search is an outcome of the attempt to fix poor Windows folder organization and its File System.

You're welcome to your opinion, even if it's wrong.