What Processes are Necessary for Windows XP?

Brickwall asks: "I studied electrical engineering in university (30 years ago, mind!), so I'm not completely stupid about computers. However, I have searched and searched, and been unable to find an answer to this question: if you start up Windows XP from scratch, what processes should be running? I have some P2P software running, so I know I'll have to shut that down, plus my spyware protection, anti-virus software, etc. But what should be left running? Is this documented somewhere that I've been unable to find?"

Comments

Black Viper's list

[rdwald]

The original site has been offline for a few years, but this copy of the Black Viper Windows XP Services List should come in very handy.

Re:Black Viper's list

[Bios_Hakr]

Just after SP2 came out, I found BV's list. I did a clean install with a slipstreamed SP2 disc and counted the processes and memory usage. It was something like 90mb usage and 45 processes in use.

After that, I hammered through the list disabling everything not essential to gaming. A the end, I had 22 processes and 80mb usage.

My primary intent was to clear up unused memory to make gaming more stable and faster. In this, it was a complete failure. Quake3 and other benchmarks showed a neglegable boost; maybe a few FPS.

I didn't do a security scan, but I'm sure OpenPorts would have showed a slightly more closed system. But I really don' think it would have been any more secure.

Tweaking services is really not worth the time/effort when you look at the gains. If you need more performance, a faster proc and memory can be had for maybe $200~$400. If you need more security, install a Linksys router between you and your ISP's modem. Or, you can spend 4~6 hours tweaking services for a 10mb memory boost like I did. Your choice.

Re:Black Viper's list

[ivan256]

install a Linksys router between you and your ISP's modem

Or, you know... a non-Linksys one?

Re:Black Viper's list

[Bios_Hakr]

>>4-6 hours tweaking services? Right. Even when using the list as a reference, it takes at tops 15 minutes to tweak services.

Once you have done the process a few times, it becomes second nature. However, for the first few times, you have to disable a few services and then test your applications to ensure everything works. Can I still browse the network? Does SSL still work? Can I still resolve domain names? Can I still print? Do my games still work? Can I still adjust my video preferences?

All these questions have to be answered after every step. In reality, you should disable a few services and then run the system for a week or so to make sure it's okay.

The first time I ran through this, I read BV's site completely. Couple that with trying to decipher some of the more unusual services and then actually disabling and testing and it can be a weekend job.

>>You also seem to forget that on slower systems the performance boost will be far more noticeable than on a gaming rig. Along the same lines, the time it takes to completely load WinXP into a useable state will decrease. That "10mb" can make a huge difference on a system with low memory - much like the ones they initially shipped WinXP on.

Many of the people running those systems will never even know about disabling services. Chances are, if you really care about performance, you'll care enough to throw in a few sticks of RAM. On low-end systems, RAM is really cheap. I just added a 1GB of pc133 to my mom's computer. I got 512 from a geeky friend who was upgrading for free. The other 512 came from a swap meet and cost about $20.

And no ammount of service tweaking will replace the boost you see from going from 128MB to 1GB of RAM.

Tweaking is fun for geeks. That's what we do. But within the realm of mere mortals, it's a lost art. We'll spend hours to squeeze out a few extra FPS or reduce boot times by a few seconds. We'll install 10k RPM drives in RAID0 to get a few extra MB of transfer. And that's all well and good if your system is already at the top of the heap.

As far as the low end goes, the old adage remains true: you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Re:Black Viper's list

[Anonymous Coward]

Black Viper has probably caused more problems for Windows novices than anyone else in the history of the internet. Countless people blindly follow his guides, only to ignore that part that says "keep a list of which services you've turned off", and innevitbaly have problems later on. To add inuslt to injury, there has been no conclusive proof that disabling services improves performance one iota.

The WIndows NT line is not like the Win9x line. It doesn't have the silly resource limits of Win9x and can swap out unused memory ot disk. When you save "20MB of memory" by disabling a bunch of services, you are actually saving 20MB of data in your swap file, since Windows will swap out the memory your services are using to disk to make room for your apps.

Re:Black Viper's list

[BandwidthHog]

Black Viper has probably caused more problems for Windows novices than anyone else in the history of the internet.

I guess we’re not counting the Windows dev team in this tally, are we?

Very few are neccessary

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, if I kill this "System" process, nothing bad will happ

Not that easy

[cnettel]

There are a few drivers that add their own usermode services (not just tray apps, but "real" services), for example. I'm not sure from the question if the intent is to get a lean system, or an attempt to identify unwanted - as in possible malware - processes. Googling individual process file names generally gives a pretty good picture of what it is and whether it's needed, or at least where it comes from.

Saw these on Digg some time back

[bheer]

Guide to useless XP services ... I don't think all the ones they mention are 'useless', for example SSDP Discovery is very useful to those using UPnP DSL/Cable modems and UPnP-savvy software like uTorrent or Azureus, but it's still a good article: http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?a rticle_id=70112&cat_id=584

Do not kill the following processes....

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Windows Genurine Advantage
2. Windows Activation Trojan
3. Automatic Updates with added value checking
4. Minesweeper
5. SaveBargins.exe
6. Vista Notification Bonus

Useless Services

[Xian007]

This is a pretty handy site.. I just ran across it a couple days ago and was about to look through it at home today and disable most of the services listed.

Useless XP SP2 Services: http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?a rticle_id=70112&cat_id=584

(Quick way to get to list: Start->Run->services.msc)

Re: Mark Russinovich asked this question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the link:
http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/07/running-w indows-with-no-services.html

Note that the original poster is asking about processes, and many readers are answering with information more specifically about services, including this Sysinternals article. Still, it's relevant even if not the entire story.

You can also google for the names of your process executables and usually find descriptions of what they are.

Necessary Services?

[ceresur]

I remembered seeing this a few months back on /., but you can load WinXP without any services. Doesn't quite answer the question but it still makes for interesting reading. http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/07/running-w indows-with-no-services.html

Re:It's simple.

[Jherico]

That's an excellent way to completely screw up your machine by disabling services that might be needed later for things like printing. If you shut down the spooler and then 3 weeks later need to print something you can spend a long time trying to figure out why printing doesn't work.