Disabling useless services for speeding up your computer - Modifications for the corporate computers

I was perusing through the various articles on tips to increase the speed/response of your personal computer, that is Windows XP based in the net. Came across a ton of articles that allow you to speed up your computer in very many ways. However, all of them had one common trait, which rendered them useless for me - a corporate computer user, they were ideal for a home PC environment!

However, there are some brilliant articles out there for tweaking your services for the Home PC environment!

You have

• Tweaking Windows XP - a fairly good overview on Windows Tweaking
• TweakHound's Super XP Tweaking Guide - Nice article giving various tweaking levels from minor system improvements to gamer level optimizations
• Qwerty Maniac's guide to disabling useless services and speeding up your computer - Nice, short, concise, works!!
• 3D Spotlight | Windows XP Services Tweak Guide
• Tweak XP [dot] com - Performance Tweaks [you have an amazing array of tweaking options here, for the person who searches for the start button to the guy who plays around with the registry(and knows what he's doing ;-) )]
• Beginners Guides: Understanding and Tweaking WindowsXP Services - decent explanations and insights into the various tweaking processes and description of services
• Tweak Hound - Windows XP [kinda just about k, not recommended too much]
• Windows XP Tweaking - Startup and General Performance Tweaks - nice!!

Things aren't so peachy and rarely dandy when you ARE connected to a DHCP based network, when you DO have a proxy situation, when you HAVE TO USE [or at least forced to use] a firewall, when you have a framework running that takes up a humongous chunk of your memory! When at times of dire need, and memory management, your office anti-virus suddenly decides to scan and crashes your whole system :-D!

So, what do you do to make your computer more responsive in this case? I personally run in a corporate network, running a framework that eats humongous chunks of memory - about a gig, when you just start up the application. ;-)! So, things get on to a rough state, the closer it gets to the virtual memory limit!

Nevertheless, let me try and stop the basic minimum of services that does not screw up your connectivity and usability in office, and give some more tips to increase the speed in your computer.

Before you start up with any of this - here's a disclaimer stating that it worked for me, chances are that it will work for you! However, in case it doesn't or in the worst scenario, crap your system, don't call/blame me. The ideal person to call would be your system administrator and tell him what you tried to do exactly! You can always give him this link and tell him to block the site forever from your corporate n/w! Hopefully, you don't go to that extreme, but just leave me a comment with the exact steps you did, and I will try and find out as to why the tip failed ;-)!!

So, first up tweaking the Windows XP Services. Now, if you are wondering what the hell am I doing talking about services, stop reading this right here, right now, as far as the technical things go! You can of course, continue down to see if I have more interspersed subtle humor in them :-D!! Of course, as I am typing this in, right now I can't promise or deny any!

Since, so many people have spent a tremendous amount of effort to explain in detail, the various services present in the Windows XP and what they do, and why to disable them, I have decided to forego that much. Instead, I will use one of the many of these service explanations and work from there!

Ok, here we go! Note: Whatever, I have stricken through, you will need it being in a corporate n/wed environment! Leave 'em alone, unless of course, you wanna have an interesting conversation with your sys admins like I have had!

AdobeLM ServiceAlerter – Disable this if you aren’t on a network because you wont receive an alert thus.Application Management – Set this to manual.Automatic Updates – Disable it if you don’t require auto updating and patching of windows. Pretty useless if you use auto-patcher by neowin for updating your windows. Saves bandwidth.ClipBook – Disable this if you aren’t on a network since you don’t need to share anything then.Computer Browser – Disable this too if you aren’t on a network as then you don’t have to browse and monitor connected computers.Cryptographic Services – Set this to manual if you aren’t sure you require this.Distributed Transaction Service – Set this to manual.DNS Client – Set this to manual if you aren’t on a network.QwertyError Reporting Service – Disable this damn useless service for reporting errors to Microsoft because they will hardly even reply to you for any error you get. Also saves lots of bandwidth.Fast User Switching CompatibilityFTP PublishingHelp and SupportHTTP SSLHuman Interface Device AccessIMAPI CD-Burning COM ServiceIndexing ServiceInstallDriver Table Manager – Disable this, does no harm in doing so.Do not disable this!!IPSEC Services – Set this to manual.Messenger – Disable this if you aren’t on a network, it uses too much memory and is a hog. Also it does no good and is a known security threat sometimes.MS Software Shadow Copy ProviderNet Logon – disable if you aren’t on a network.NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing – Disable this if you don’t use Remote desktop feature, pretty useless feature according to me.Network Provisioning Service – disable this, its useless if you aren’t on a network.NT LM Security Support Provider – Disable this, its useless too.NVIDIA Display Driver ServiceOffice Source Engine – Disable it if you have a MS Office CD handy always, its helpful if your installation goes corrupt.Portable Media Serial Number ServicePrint Spooler – Disable it if you don’t have a printer.Protected StorageRemote Desktop Help Session Manager – Disable it if you don’t use Remote Desktop feature for help and support from Microsoft which most probably is a Yes.Remote Procedure Call Locator – Set it to manual.Remote Registry – Serious security threat if turned on, disable it no matter what.Removable StorageRouting and Remote AccessSecondary LogonSecurity Accounts ManagerSecurity Center – Damn useless and irritating feature. Disable it. No use at all.Server – set it to manual or disable it if not on network.Smart CardSSDP Discovery ServiceTask Scheduler – Disable it if you don’t schedule tasks like defragmentation, error scans etc… and plan to do it your self instead.TCP/IP NetBIOS HelperTelnetTerminal ServicesUninterrupted Power SupplyUniversal Plug and Play Device HostUser Privilege ServiceVolume Shadow CopyWindows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)Windows Media ConnectWindows Media Connect (WMC) HelperWindows Time – Disable if not on a synchronized network.Wireless Zero ConfigurationWMI Performance AdaptersWorkstation

[source: QwertyManiac's Guide to Disabling Useless Services and Speeding up your computer] Please note: the article above is a modified version of the original article!!

So, now that you have played around with Windows XP services and oozed as much as you can without seriously limiting your n/wing and corporate communication capabilities, here are some more tips and tricks to increase the responsiveness of your system!

Wallpapers, Desktop themes, animated cursors etc...
But first, [at the expense of sounding like a cliched The Mask dialogue] some philosophy!!

There are two kinds of office working people, who demand excellent, top notch performance from their system. [We are not talking about the other kind who give a hoot to the system memory reading at startup]

People who want to get the maximum out of their system, not worrying about the look of their PC. All they care about is that the system performance is running peak! Ba**s to how the computer looks. They don't care if Windows need a curved edge or what color they are. They despise animated icons, cursors etc. They don't care about the transparency of their Windows.

The other kind of people, which includes me, demand an optimized system performance, but demand a balance from the look factor as well. It's not all about the system memory reading if enabling themes will increase it by a minute factor [The factor of course is subjective]!

For the first kinda people - disable the Themes service!
For the second kinda people - install Style XP.

Wallpapers, themes etc do take up some memory! So, if you wanna save even that much memory space, disable them! Have a desktop background color [if you need it], disable all menu animation, effects, etc. You can do this by goin to Display Properties->Appearance(tab)->Effects
You can disable

• Show Shadows Under Menus
• Show Window Contents While Dragging

Furthermore, install Tweak UI Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP. Once you are done, you can run Tweak UI. Go to General option on the left and click there. Disable all the checks there for the "eye candy" features of Windows XP!

Warning: After this, your Windows will look like crap, but it will be definitely faster!!

More tweaking...

So, you have done all that, you still think some more tweaking is required. Go for the safe way. Get TweakXP Pro, these guys are good. The optimizations do work.

Important Stuff

One of the most important things is to strike a balance between your looks [if you really want it] and your performance. Extra browsers, messengers, widgets, will definitely eat up more RAM as your system boots up. There is always a tradeoff to performance and increased functionality. Anyway, some tips on which of the applications really eat up space, and which don't!

• Winamp 5.x series: The best MP3 player out there. It has all the necessary functionality that you need to play songs, videos and what not :-)! The best part about the player tho - 4-11MB [Mem usage] and 7-13 MB [Virtual memory size], depending on your playlist size, and the skins. Something that is way far better than Windows Media Player or iTunes. [If you want a 4MB/2MB combo, use the Winamp 2.9x. It has video playback capability as well, without the presence of extra memory hogging new skins
• Firefox 1.5x: One of the best browsers out there, albeit its stand-alone nature as compared to Internet Explorer 7 beta. Uses some memory, but well worth the performance, extensibility and functionality. IE7 does a good job, but is still not bug free.
• Style XP 3.x: The best theming software for the newbies. The best theming software with some tradeoff for the memory size. Although it minimizes its memory usage, if you'd like to theme and customize your Windows desktop/look and feel, I'd say go for this!
• Google GTalk: The lightest instant messenger ever built to date. Does not feature even emoticons, but boy o boy it's fast, almost runs like a charm in your environment without denting[read: peaking] your memory graph!
• Microsoft Outlook 2003: Consumes more memory [virtual memory] than your previous Outlook versions, but well worth it. However, if you are NOT based on the Exchange server and based on the POP3/IMAP protocol for office mails, stick to Mozilla Thunderbird! That one is light, and it doubles up as a news reader and RSS aggregator!

Unnecessary drivers, registry entries

These days, with the plethora of USB based devices, you may have a number of device drivers in your system. Furthermore, you may also have a lotta junk entries in your registry. Use a registry cleaning software to dump out the unwanted stuff

Warning: Please do this if and only if you are aware of the entries that can be deleted. Speaking from experience, always backup, then tweak. In case you think there are some problems, restore your registry!