Need Full Windows Services List

[Frostmourne]

63 processes? That isn't 7 - I have less than 50 on my gaming PC and less than 55 (usually) on my laptop. What have you bloated 7 with?

Aside from a home network, only office 2007, AV and and a firewall. I am running ultimate which has a lot of networking type stuff. I am slowly and cautiously going through and disabling some of that.

If the AV is AVG, kill it with a removal tool and install Microsoft Security Essentials.

 

[DarkPhoenix]

A lot of people in this thread have said,

" Windows does a great job of managing services. Most services are on manual so they only run if Windows needs them. What's the harm in letting this service stay in manual mode - Don't disable it! It's better in manual mode! "

Hog wash.

Here are some good reasons for disabling all services that you do not need or never intend to use.

From: Jorge Orchilles

" By default Microsoft sets many of these services to start automatically. This is done to ensure the Windows install works on a typical deployment. However running services that you do not need to run automatically can be a security risk as well as have the ability to slow down your system. "

(When he says Automatic above, I really think he means manual and this is just a typo.)

Those two are good enough for me. Security Risks and Slowdowns. Two major problems people want to avoid.

As I study about services I notice there are only about 175 services you need to gather information on. This is not that daunting a task that you cannot do it in a days time. Many of these you will quickly find are critical to Windows operation and you don't need to disable them. But there are tons that you never need depending on how you use your computer.

I believe everyone should take the time to learn about these services and completely disable the ones they will never use. With these websites and thier descriptions as well as the descriptions in Sysinternal's AutoRuns + Microsoft's website itself you will really know what you want or need to run with complete confidence.

Notice I said Disable, Not set to Manual. Setting an unneeded service to manual can be a security risk and slow your system down. But you must make sure it is something you will never need or use.

For instance. I do not own any wireless devices, so I have disabled all bluetooth and related services. If I leave them set to Manual, and a virus comes along that exploits these services, the virus can run the service in the background and I would never know it. That is why it is best to set these types of unwanted services to Disabled.

Windows 7 Service Configurations by Black Viper

Jorge Orchilles

Standard Windows 7 Services Svchost.exe

It can only serve to make your computer more secure, faster and help you or others troubleshoot problems better when they occur, knowing what is allowed to run or not run.

I do also recommend you set a System Restore Point before making major changes to services, so you can recover if there is a problem.

Instead of using Windows System Restore, you could try one of these apps, which have better compression methods than Windows System Restore and are known for lots smaller restore points.

These two both work the same way and are much better than System Restore..

Comodo Time Machine (Free!)

Data Recovery with Comodo Time Machine | Comodo

Rollback Rx (Commercial)

RollBack Rx - Windows System Restore Software - Download Today

Aside from having smaller restore points (called Snapshots by these programs), they are greatly superior to Windows System Restore in that the restore points do not reside on your C drive in Windows where it can be attacked and corrupted by virus.

These programs install to and save restore points on a layer of your hard drive that is underneath your Windows/C drive partition layer. Nothing from Windows, even a nasty virus can access them there.

This way, if you get hit with a virus that even cripples your Windows operating system to the point where it will not even boot, you can easily and quickly restore your system. The virus can wipe out everything and you can still recover.

This is a major draw back of window system restore because the restore points reside on your C drive. They are not protected from virus's in this manner.

 

[Frostmourne]

Windows 7 inside out should have a list of the services, and their recommendation if I recall would be to stop touching them - at least it was in the vista version.

 

[DarkPhoenix]

Windows 7 inside out should have a list of the services, and their recommendation if I recall would be to stop touching them - at least it was in the vista version.

I haven't read that book. But I can see it being good advice for people that won't spend the time to really learn about their system. Some people just will never be bothered to do it.

I am sure they did not mean that for power users who really study the services. If you have a copy, can you find what their reasoning was for this?

After spending the last few days researching all about the services, they do not intimidate me in the least. It's just like the registry. Once you understand it, you can begin to master it.

 

[CarlTR6]

Windows 7 inside out should have a list of the services, and their recommendation if I recall would be to stop touching them - at least it was in the vista version.

I haven't read that book. But I can see it being good advice for people that won't spend the time to really learn about their system. Some people just will never be bothered to do it.

I am sure they did not mean that for power users who really study the services. If you have a copy, can you find what their reasoning was for this?

After spending the last few days researching all about the services, they do not intimidate me in the least. It's just like the registry. Once you understand it, you can begin to master it.

I concur. Services that I do not understand all the ramifications of, I leave on manual. Services that I know I do not need - like blue tooth, services that deal wih corporate type LAN net works, etc - I can safely disable for the two reasons you stated.

 

[unifex]

63 processes? That isn't 7 - I have less than 50 on my gaming PC and less than 55 (usually) on my laptop. What have you bloated 7 with?

Aside from a home network, only office 2007, AV and and a firewall. I am running ultimate which has a lot of networking type stuff. I am slowly and cautiously going through and disabling some of that.

I have Ultimate. I am running 45 processes at start-up, 5 of them being Samurize meters. That includes the AV and firewall (ESET in my case). I am not sure how do you get 70.

 

[CarlTR6]

I had 63 services running; I am now down to 59.

 

[BunBun]

I have 36-37 processes (edit not sure how many services...w hat are you guys calling running servers? Just services that are actually started at boot?) running on startup of my Windows 7 build. With 820-840MB memory used. It's getting there. I am at the point now where I am satisfied enough to not really think about it in terms of XP vs Win 7 now. And watching my usage if I do stuff for a few hours and then close everything I usually have ~45 services and 1-1.2GB memory used. Wait long enough and it goes back down to 36 and 840mb.

I totally agree about the security issue part... I forgot about that one.

Frostmourne there is absolutely zero implications to disabling services by the power user on their own machine. If you dont want to then dont. It is really quite that simple.

EDIT:

Don't disable the power service... I thought it just had to do with power manegment for lower power consumption stuff (which it may still be what it is...) but disabling it causes a lot of other stuff to fail.

 

[CarlTR6]

I am strictly looking at start up services. I will tackle all of the processes later.

 

[Thorsen]

I have 36-37 processes (edit not sure how many services...w hat are you guys calling running servers? Just services that are actually started at boot?) running on startup of my Windows 7 build. With 820-840MB memory used. It's getting there. I am at the point now where I am satisfied enough to not really think about it in terms of XP vs Win 7 now. And watching my usage if I do stuff for a few hours and then close everything I usually have ~45 services and 1-1.2GB memory used. Wait long enough and it goes back down to 36 and 840mb.

I totally agree about the security issue part... I forgot about that one.

Frostmourne there is absolutely zero implications to disabling services by the power user on their own machine. If you dont want to then dont. It is really quite that simple.

EDIT:

Don't disable the power service... I thought it just had to do with power manegment for lower power consumption stuff (which it may still be what it is...) but disabling it causes a lot of other stuff to fail.

not individual services, Processes. I have 75 processes running at startup......Which is alot... I dont know how many services are started at startup. I will check on this later......

 

[unifex]

not individual services, Processes. I have 75 processes running at startup......Which is alot... I dont know how many services are started at startup. I will check on this later......

That's what I meant earlier, if you forget about Samurize, I got 39 start-up processes. I don't think I ever go up to 70 with all programs open - I just don't use 40 programs at a time

EDIT: right now I've got 56 services running. There are lots of them listed in the Task manager as stopped. Not sure if all of those were running at start-up.

 

[Thorsen]

Hmm I just got this laptop from Asus and have installed only a few things. I try to keep things from running at startup. if I need to run a program, I will run it.

Asus had some pre-installed software, and it loads automatically. I dont use all these programs everyday, yet they load on startup. I use Process Explorer from sysinternals, so I don't know how many processes are listed in Task manager. Process Explorer lists everything the system is using. I do know I am not running 40 programs on startup. At max, probably 5 programs are running at startup: MSE (anti-spyware) and all of asus's crap lol

I will have to look later and see what services I am running on startup, how many actual programs are running and how many processes are listed in Task Manager.

 

[BunBun]

I am strictly looking at start up services. I will tackle all of the processes later.

That might be why your number is higher then others. I think others are reporting processes.

 

[gregrocker]

Deal with Startup items in msconfig.

I uncheck everything in Startup tab except MS entries for Gadgets and Stiky Notes, plus my AV. That's it.

PC starts up in seconds and is never less than instantaneous, on all of my machines.

Accept no free riders on your Startup and you won't be slowed down.

 

[CarlTR6]

not individual services, Processes. I have 75 processes running at startup......Which is alot... I dont know how many services are started at startup. I will check on this later......

That's what I meant earlier, if you forget about Samurize, I got 39 start-up processes. I don't think I ever go up to 70 with all programs open - I just don't use 40 programs at a time

EDIT: right now I've got 56 services running. There are lots of them listed in the Task manager as stopped. Not sure if all of those were running at start-up.

No doubt there are some services that do run during startup - or shortly thereafter if they are delayed. - then stop themselves when no longer needed. That is the beauty of manual in Windows 7.

 

[CarlTR6]

Greg, like you, I have only the bare essentials run at startup - gadgets, av, firewall, wireless.

 

[gregrocker]

Carl, even the wireless entry in msconfig might be unnecessary if it is the maker's connection manager - tends to conflict with Windows connection manager which is pretty much perfect in Win7 (complete with troubleshooter that actually fixes things).

I just disabled a friend's HP connection manager and it sped up his startup/shutdown times by 30 seconds.

 

[CarlTR6]

Actually, it is the MS services for wireless that are loading at startup.

 

[DarkPhoenix]

You know.. it's funny.. some services depending on which thread/tutorial you read can be safely disabled.. but other sites say otherwise. Like the power services.. it's like the two authors have different understanding of what the service actually does or how it works.. I suppose you have to be redundant in your information gathering.

Some sites say use msconfig and others say never use msconfig but use services.msc instead.

Why would services.msc be better to use than msconfig? They never explain this.

A lot of services are grouped by categories it seems.. for instance there are a set number of services that only work with bluetooth. But nothing tells you this.. you find this out by researching.. I may make a tutorial with services grouped by category. This way, if your know you don't need a certain category on your machine, you can look at the whole list of services for that category and disable them. This way we could create profiles or user configurations that will let the user optimize his computer for the type of work he does.

That would take a while to get together LOL. But I think it's possible. If I were better with Visual Basic.. (God that would be tons of hooks) I could write an app that does it.. just check the radio button for the category to disable it.

 

[BunBun]

Msconfig is just a front end that combines a bunch of things in to one interface.

Useing the useing the MMC snap in services allows you to get right into the services and configure more options. The MMC snap in also allows connecting to other computers on the network to configure there settings as well so it is more useful from an administrator point of view.