Server Service

[Norwood]

I am thinking of setting this service to manual, as this is a home machine.

It does, however, have a wireless network running to which I've attached 4 devices (two laptops, a printer and an Xbox - but that's wired to the router).

The description of this service states:

Supports file, print, and named-pipe sharing over the network for this computer. If this service is stopped, these functions will be unavailable. If this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depend on it will fail to start.

99% of me is sure that the above statement applies to a workstation in a production environment but I wanted to make sure and bounce it off a few of you folks.

Am I right?

 

[EzioAuditore]

Change it's startup type to manual and try stopping the service. If it doesn't affect anything then your good to go.

 

[logicearth]

That services handles the file sharing, printer sharing are you wanting to remove the functionality?

 

[Rene]

The server service is a known security risk, and in recent years several malware has used holes in it to spread.

Really if you don't have printer sharing etc. your safer on disabling this service. Also one can disable workstation too. These in case if one doesn't have a home network. RJ45-jack, ethernet cable and adsl/vdsl etc. router and/or wlan doesn't require these services. Internet connection and home network are different things. That's why you can disable all the home networking stuff if u don't use them, like computer browser, ntfs links, uPnP and many more!