Scorbing Posted February 16, 2008 Share Posted February 16, 2008 Guys Vista has way too much crap running. What services can be safely turned off? ** And please don't send me to Viper's web site. Been there already and it didn't help much. ** Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+allan MVC Posted February 16, 2008 MVC Share Posted February 16, 2008 Well, if you don't find black viper's site useful I'm not sure what to tell you. It's the best site I know of for explaining services and their settings. There are other similar sites, but his is the best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mordkanin Posted February 16, 2008 Share Posted February 16, 2008 You should note that many of the services in Vista have been split up, and many things now spawn multiple processes for various (Generally security) reasons, which may be contributing to your feeling that there's too much 'stuff' running. To name a few: -There's going to be an extra csrss.exe for Session 0 -Explorer will handle Preview Handlers out of its process (Probably for security/stability reasons) -The indexer will spawn a bunch of processes -Many services that were all grouped up into one giant svchost are now spread out among several. -IE is going to run in several processes (This one is for Protected Mode) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M.F.D.K Posted February 16, 2008 Share Posted February 16, 2008 I recommend two useful sites that are the best at explaining Vista's services: http://www.speedyvista.com/services.html and the other one is that, "allan" mentioned. http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm happy tweaking, but don't get carried away ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scorbing Posted February 16, 2008 Author Share Posted February 16, 2008 Hey I got another question, I replaced my ATI Catalyst v8.1 drivers with the new v8.2 and now Vista says my score is 4.8. When I had v8.1 of the drivers it said my score was 5.0. Any idea what might have caused this? Is it important? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Viriix Posted February 18, 2008 Share Posted February 18, 2008 i would have a WEI rating of 99 and it wouldnt make any difference :rolleyes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon Live Veteran Posted February 18, 2008 Veteran Share Posted February 18, 2008 Those services are there for a reason. Are you having some problem that you want to resolve? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+allan MVC Posted February 18, 2008 MVC Share Posted February 18, 2008 Those services are there for a reason. Are you having some problem that you want to resolve? Don't mean to disagree Brandon Live, but that's just not the case. A fair number of services are enabled that many users simply don't need. MS enables (sets to "automatic") networking, indexing, and other services by default to make life easy for the average user as opposed to promoting efficiency. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrFuji Posted February 18, 2008 Share Posted February 18, 2008 ^Or the Tablet PC service :) Honestly, I don't even know if there's a huge performance gain by disabling unnecessary services... Mostly t's just a placebo effect, I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+allan MVC Posted February 18, 2008 MVC Share Posted February 18, 2008 ^Or the Tablet PC service :) Honestly, I don't even know if there's a huge performance gain by disabling unnecessary services... Mostly t's just a placebo effect, I guess. On the contrary, it frees up otherwise used resources (ram) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon Live Veteran Posted February 19, 2008 Veteran Share Posted February 19, 2008 Don't mean to disagree Brandon Live, but that's just not the case. A fair number of services are enabled that many users simply don't need. MS enables (sets to "automatic") networking, indexing, and other services by default to make life easy for the average user as opposed to promoting efficiency. I'd disagree that networking and indexing are the sort of thing that anyone who has to ask this question should be messing with. If there were a more specific question, such as "My machine is only used for x and y, can I disable service z?" then perhaps I'd have a more specific answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soldier1st Posted February 19, 2008 Share Posted February 19, 2008 service tweaking in vista is not really needed much now unlike in xp where it was a good idea,if you want to trim resource usage try turning stuff off like the games and calander n stuff and check what starts with vista. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phot0nic Posted February 19, 2008 Share Posted February 19, 2008 In XP I tweak all of my services. I notice an improved boot time and an overall (slightly) faster experience. However, this is not the case in Vista. I haven't been able to gain any performance from Vista by tweaking services. Don't get me wrong, Vista runs plenty fast on this machine. However, disabling services does not improve that. Therefore, I've come to the conclusion that Vista is plenty smart enough to determine what should be running, and how many resources should be allotted. Seriously, I agree with Brandon. If you have a need to disable a specific service, that's one thing. However, if you're just trying to squeeze some more performance from your machine, this won't get you very far. edit: just to clarify, I'm speaking of Windows services, not those installed by third-party software. Sometimes those are not necessary and add unwanted overhead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+allan MVC Posted February 19, 2008 MVC Share Posted February 19, 2008 Vista isn't "smart enough" to determine what should be running. Again, the default settings are geared to "make everything work" (key word: everything) rather than be concerned with efficiency. The main reason many people don't notice much difference when tweaking services (setting unnecessary services to "manual" rather than "automatic") is because most systems running Vista are pretty "loaded" in the first place. Look, I'm not advocating heavily tweaking services. I'm simply saying there are indeed a number of services which can safely be set to manual instead of automatic (and there's no harm in doing so) and even a few that can be disabled. On the other hand, if you're happy with they way your system is running there's also no harm in leaving things alone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iZoom Posted February 19, 2008 Share Posted February 19, 2008 I agree that Vista has improved on what needs to be run, however, it's not foolproof. Some examples: I have set Windows Search to Manual and yet it still feels the need to run. I do not use search on my computer...ever. I have a desktop PC, so why does Tablet PC service run? Hmmm Wlan autoconfig is pointless on a desktop with no wireless card. These are just a few of the a handful I set to manual or disabled. Granted, I might not see a performance boost, but I don't need it running either way, especially if I'm never going to use something like Tablet input. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soldier1st Posted February 19, 2008 Share Posted February 19, 2008 you can turn tablet off and several other things by going to programs and features. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scuderiaconchiglia Posted February 19, 2008 Share Posted February 19, 2008 you can turn tablet off and several other things by going to programs and features. If you turn off the tablet service, you loose the wonderful "snipping tool". It is much better than the old "print screen key" screen capture. Gary Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Izlude Posted February 19, 2008 Share Posted February 19, 2008 Most of us are just looking for a guide for the following catagories. Networked Gamer Offline Gamer Networked Workstation Offline Workstation Each should have their own list of things to safely turn off. Do such lists exist? Vipers site just tells you what everything does, but no real guide on what you "really can" turn off exists, or does it? I'd be happy if I could find "networked gamer" and positively turn every other thing off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phot0nic Posted February 19, 2008 Share Posted February 19, 2008 Look, I'm not advocating heavily tweaking services. I'm simply saying there are indeed a number of services which can safely be set to manual instead of automatic (and there's no harm in doing so) and even a few that can be disabled. On the other hand, if you're happy with they way your system is running there's also no harm in leaving things alone. My point is not that EVERY user uses EVERY service. My point is that disabling the services you don't need in Vista does not offer an increase in performance like it did in XP. Go ahead, disable unused services. You *might* not run into any errors, but I can almost guarantee that your machine isn't any faster (noticeably, anyways) than before your tweaking. And yes, Vista is smarter when handling services. Although it doesn't know what services you use and what services you don't use, it won't take a noticeable amount of resources to fuel a service unless you're using something that depends on that service. In other words, Vista doesn't allow services that you don't need degrade your overall performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iZoom Posted February 19, 2008 Share Posted February 19, 2008 Well if you have the sense to follow the various guides out there, then I can imagine you can discern for yourself what is necessary and what isn't for a "networked gamer" and so on. If I'm not doing any file-sharing, printing, etc then I can disable those services. If I run my own firewall, then I can disable Windows's built-in program. Follow me? It took me a little longer, but after cross-referencing certain sites and their descriptions of services, I managed to narrow down my list to the essentials plus the bells and whistles that I want on and only those. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+allan MVC Posted February 19, 2008 MVC Share Posted February 19, 2008 Vipers site just tells you what everything does, but no real guide on what you "really can" turn off exists, or does it? On the contrary, on black viper's site there is an explanation of every service, its dependancies, "safe" settings, default settings, & tweaked settings. My point is not that EVERY user uses EVERY service. My point is that disabling the services you don't need in Vista does not offer an increase in performance like it did in XP. Well, not exactly. Disabling unnecessary processes should result if faster boot times and will also free up some ram (which may or may not be important). But it is true that Vista manages processess / services differently from XP and you may very well not notice much, if any, of a performance boost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian M. Veteran Posted February 20, 2008 Veteran Share Posted February 20, 2008 The only problem with those "which services should I disable" lists, is that everybody uses their computer for different things. I had massive problems with an application a while back that required a service I had disabled "because I don't need it". Therefore it's always best to test everything, and go through them to disable the ones that suit your configuration, rather than disabling the same services that suited somebody else's config. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Izlude Posted February 20, 2008 Share Posted February 20, 2008 Just disabled several things I found out I don't need. After rebooting everything worked normally. I found a 50mb difference in used resources. From 438 to 387. I wonder what other things I can really disable. There were some services that claimed to be needed to connect to some direct cable ISP connections but I didn't shut them off... Maybe I'll try it out and see what happens. I'm going to guess for each person it is going to HAVE to be a trial and error type thing. Looks like lists won't work after all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HawkMan Posted February 20, 2008 Share Posted February 20, 2008 you can't compare memory usage differencein Vista like that, well unless you did something stupid like diabling superfetch. since superfecth precaches memory the amount of used memory won't really be indicative of what you want it to be. and to top it off, do you really think 50MB will give aNY difference at all. especially cosidering IF any services you don't need used that memory, any app that requires more meory than is currently available, will have memory released from these services unless they are being actively used. You're basically disabling services with o real performance gain, outside of a potential change in what is displayed as currently used memory Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Izlude Posted February 20, 2008 Share Posted February 20, 2008 Woah, lol, check this out! Close everything you're running (as if you're going to reboot) take note of your memory usage. Disable Readyboost (even if you're not using a stick, just disable it) Now reboot and see what happens! After that, open the task manager and open the performance tab. Now enable readyboost and watch what happens. That just blew me away! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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