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#21
Ah, the classic argument. As testing and benchmarking have shown, disabling unneeded services doesn't yield much, if any results because those services are not actually in use and using resources.
Let me give you an example, one that was hotly debated on the [H]ardforums a while ago. On a desktop PC, someone like QuackViper would recommend disabling the wireless zero-config service. Unneeded, right? Right, because no wireless adapter was present in the system. The problem is, setting that service to disabled or manual, isn't going to suddenly give me more memory. It wasn't in use to begin with.
If disabling services makes you feel warm and fuzzy, by all means do it. That's commonly referred to as a placebo effect, because it yields no measurable results. What it can do, however, is render your system with stability issues.
That's why, if you read on just about any enthusiast forum, the best advice for tweaking Vista and Windows 7 is.....leave it alone.