Disabling Windows 7 Services

Oh, I believe you. I'm just saying that disabling unused services just because they're unused does nothing whatsoever.

And, my friend, you were exaggerating when you said 100+ services.

Heh heh, yeah you're right. I just counted the services not being used which came to 120 something. I think my other system is running 65+ services out of the box, so I've canned about 45 services or so. Still love Win7, it's the best they've done so far.

Nice to see one of these threads again now that they're so much more civil.

A year or two ago there was still a loud collision between the two points of view.

Corazon said:

Couldn't agree more severedsolo. Personally I'm more like FastBoot, I enjoy tweaking and will go to great lengths to squeeze every drop of performance out of my computer. That said, I don't touch anything until I absolutely know for sure what its purpose is - which means I end up on Google and Wikipedia a lot. :) It's a fun way of learning and teaching myself some new tricks too.

The problem with so many other users is that they blindly follow recommendations and tips they pick up somewhere without knowing what they're really doing. It's partially the fault of users who won't educate themselves first and are too quick to trust shady (or simply outdated) sources, and partially the fault of those who spread half-baked advice without in-depth explanations on the Internet to begin with.

I think this is the issue, getting reliable information before tweaking anything, understanding the implications and having the means of reversing any changes made. And Greg my system never has BSODs merely hiccups from the very many pieces of software I have to maintain like everyone else. I think if you can trim your basic memory useage then that means more is available for other processes so I do disable some services though not to the extent of FastBoot. Also disabling many of the Event Logs although perhaps not necessary must have some impact - I can't really see why so many are enabled by default when they are just logging mundane information.

This is faulty thinking. You want to USE your memory, not preserve it. Any not being used is wasted.

What you don't want to do is peg your RAM, by having enough to begin with.

gregrocker said:

This is faulty thinking. You want to USE your memory, not preserve it. Any not being used is wasted.

What you don't want to do is peg your RAM, by having enough to begin with.

I think what you mean is use it for the things you want it to be used for - not the things that are just hangers-on. I'm afraid my system is maxed out at 4Gb, runs happily though and I'm quite content with Windows 7 but I'll continue to trim where I can to make my system as I want it - and have more space for the programs I choose to run.

A better approach is to get a clean boot so nothing is running without your knowledge. Uncheck everything in msconfig>Startup and >Services (after hiding MS services) except your AV. Check back after reboots and periodically that nothing writes itself back in or turn it off in its Program prefs or Uninstall.

Totally agree. Which is exactly why I wrote in my initial post (twice) that I don't recommend turning off all the services that I did. I also called this system my 'suicide' system to make it clear. I researched each service I flipped off and its relation to another, so I know which one (or more) to snap on if I need to (did you know there are a least 5 services needed for restores and 6 for images?)

My goal wasn't really performance, that was a nice side effect. I wanted to see if a Win7 system could run properly without all the icing and without relying on computer dogma.