Clearing Unnecessary Services (1)
Windows services (called just services for the rest of this chapter) are indispensable parts of the operating system. They wait in the background until an application makes a request and then they perform
a task. Afterward, the service waits again until another request appears. For example, whenever you make a request for an online resource, the Telephony service makes sure you can access it. You
can’t connect to the Internet without this service. You’ll find all of the services on your machine listed in the Services console located in the Administrative Tools folder of the Control Panel. Figure 7.17 shows a typical view of this console.
Notice that this console displays the status of the service—whether it starts automatically and whether it’s running now. When a service is marked as stopped, it means that you don’t have to worry about the service using any memory or processing cycles because the service isn’t loaded. Services marked Automatic always start; those marked Manual can start when an application needs them; those marked Disabled can’t start for any reason.
The biggest problem with services is that Microsoft assumes that everyone works in a large corporation with a complex network and a brutish administrator who is also a control freak. Consequently, Windows XP enables every service that provides even a dubious connection to some form of control or network connection during initial installation. In fact, when you run a stand-alone machine, you can’t even use some of these services.
NOTE Most services are obedient application slaves that wait for a request, but some are hungry monsters waiting for an excuse to gobble up system resources. For example, the Automatic Updates service will grab processing cycles and network bandwidth at regular intervals to look for Windows updates even if you disable this Windows feature. This particular service has become such a problem for gamers and others who need uninterrupted network bandwidth that you can find mentions
of it all over the Internet. The only way to get the processing cycles and network bandwidth back is to disable the Automatic Updates feature. Unfortunately, Windows XP SP2 insists on turning this service back on, so you have to reconfigure your system yet again after you install SP2.
Taken From : Microsoft Windows XP Power Optimization