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Running Windows With No Services

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stripping-the-fat dept.

mattOzan writes "So how many of the almost 4 dozen default-enabled services does Windows XP really need in order to preserve basic functioning, like web surfing and running applications? Zero, as it turns out. Mark Russinovich at Sysinternals demonstrates that if certain steps are followed, Windows XP will still run with only two active processes: System and Csrss.exe. No Smss.exe, Winlogon.exe, Services.exe, Lsass.exe... And, contrary to the expectations of various lead engineers at Microsoft, even Internet Explorer will still work under such conditions."

2 of 619 comments (clear)

  1. Lots of work by nickj6282 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seems like an awful lot of work to kill some services. Personally I think starting in runlevel 3 is much easier, maybe Windows should think about going to a CLI-only interface for some of us uber-geeks out there. That'd gain them some respect in my book.

  2. I wonder how this well XP will run on qemu by I.M.Anonymous · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder how this well XP will run on qemu with all of those services turned off? There is very little I need from windows and I wonder if this would help with those final annoying things I need from windows at home.