Colin's Weekly Tip: Modify your Services in Win2k/XP

[Colin]

For more advanced users of Win2k/XP, you can dictate to the OS what you exactly you want your OS to run. First you must enabled Administrative Tools. To do that, right click on the status bar and select properties. For Win2k, click on the Advanced Tab and under StartMenu Settings you should see a bunch of check boxes and there check Display Administrative Tools. <BR><BR>For WinXP click the Start Menu tab. If the radio button is next to "Start Menu" click it's Customize button. Once you're inside go to the Advanced tab and under Start menu items, scroll down to the bottom till you reach System Administrative Tools and select Display on the All Program Menu. If the radio button is next to the "Classic Start menu", follow the directions for the Win2k settings. After go into the Administrative Tools folder and select Services. Here you can disable whatever services you don't use. <BR><BR>Be warned though, if you disable the wrong services you can kill your OS! Only disable services you don't use! eg. IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service for WinXP if you don't have a CD-RW or don't use XP's burning software. Reboot once you're done and you should notice quite a big speed boost from your computer, services that you don't use are no longer being loaded so you have more resources for everything. If your OS will not boot, restart and go into safe mode. Then go back to the services program, enable everything and you'll be back to square one.<BR><BR>

[Curious]

I use WIN2000 and when I press Ctl-Alt-Del, I get a list of things that are loaded. I think these are the 'services' you are talking about. I would like to keep the number of things loaded in my computer to a minimum, but don't know what most of the things in the list are and am afraid to shut them down in case they will cause problems.
Does anyone know what these things are?
SystemIdleProcess System
SMSS.exe csrss.exd
isass.exe svchost.exe
appservices.exe mstask.exe
winmgmt.exe adservice.exe
VetMsg.exe adusermon.exe
windupds.exe cavtray.exe
cavrid.exe ic3.exe

Where can you find info on what these are and what they do?
How can you prevent them from loading every time you bootup?

Thanks! Peter

[Gen. Chaos]

just google the exact filename...eg. "mstask.exe" usually you will get hits describing what it is and what it does