Disabling Windows Processes/Services before gaming?

[martinlest]

I have 16GB of RAM on my PC, just about enough to run X-Plane 11 decently. However, the PC does sometimes use up 95% of this and the page file kicks in - not ideal for performance, so I am looking for ways to reduce unnecessary RAM usage.

By the time things have 'settled down' after a reboot, I generally have a little over 14GBs of free RAM. But the list of active processes in Task Manager is pretty long: I am sure that many of them could be killed off (with a script probably) just before I run X-Plane with no ill effects. (Though Windows doesn't of course always return the RAM used up, just because the process that was using it has stopped).

There used to be standard recommendations for this kind of thing, but I don't seem to be able to find them now (it is several years since I tried this). Anyone any advice?

In Task Manager, apart from Explorer.exe, one instance of svchost.exe is the main user of memory. I have attached a condensed screenshot of the services linked to this process.

Thanks.

 

[johnhoh]

There's this guy who calls himself Black Viper who has a website devoted to helping you figure out what services you can do without. His "barebones" column is probably what you are looking for
Black Viper's Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Service Configurations | Black Viper | www.blackviper.com

Note that svchost is just a service the runs other processes at the service level so you usually see several instances of it. You can right click on any of the scvhost instances in Task Manager's services tab and select "Go To Process" to see what actual processes are using that specific instance of svchost

 

[martinlest]

Black Viper

There used to be standard recommendations for this kind of thing, but I don't seem to be able to find them now

Yes, that is exactly the fellow I was thinking of! Thanks for the reminder (and the link).

 

[townsbg]

net stop "service name" can be used from a command line or bat file to stop a service. From services right click on each and select properties. From there look at what it says beside service name. Note that if the name contains a space you must put the name in quotes or the command will fail.