The services that run in background on your Windows computer are very informational, if you understand computers and have a background working with them. What is not apparent about Microsoft and these services are two fold. First of all which services to activate and which ones are related to a particular setting (accessible from control panel).

In this article, I will explain enough about the services to enable you to perform your own investigation for your pc.

Windows (up to and including XP)

services.msc - This utility shows you all the processing that goes on behind the OS and the things that are started automatically when the system boots. Adjusting the way your system loads services at start up can improve the work you do afterwards. It is important to note that many of the programs that run on you computer also have a service that is run in the background. For example: to disable Windows Updates (we strongly recommend it) from being automatically applied to your computer you would do these steps:

1. navigate to control panel, select Automatic Updates then turn off all updates

2. run this utility and turn of the Automatic Updates service and Background Intelligencer

- click start->run->services.msc

Now...I will say that these are the most common settings that we use in any diagnostic, maintenance and performance tasks that we perform - We do recommend that you understand the impact of enabling/disabling these settings beforehand.

activate services (services.msc) Application Management, Cryptographic, DHCP Client, Event Log Plug, Plug and Play, Remote Procedure Call, SSDP Discovery (goes with PnP) System Restore, Task Scheduler, Telephony, Universal Plug and Play (goes with PnP), Web Client, Windows Audio, Windows Image Acquisition, Windows Installer, Windows Management Instrumentation, WMI Performance Adapter (goes with WMI) Windows Time and Workstation.

deactivate services (services.msc) Automatic Updates & Automatic Updates Service, Background Intelligent Transfer Service, Clipbook, Error Reporting & ER Service, Index Service, Messenger (Access & Defaults) & Service MS S/W Shadow Cp/Volume Shadow Cp Remote Assistance, & RA Service Remote Desktop & RD Service Remote Registry Startup (msconfig)

manual services (services.msc) Application Layer Gateway, COM+, Computer Browser, Distributed Link Tracking Client, Help and Support HID Input Service, IPSEC, Logical Disk Manager, TCP/IP NetBios Helper, Uninterruptible Power Supply, Wireless Zero Configuration Properties

The services underlined above aslo have computer setting options available in the control panel (click start->settings->control panel->system).