Number 244 - September 2003

Windows Services (Windows What?!)
Jean Wilcox, St. The Suncoast Beeper, Petersburg FL
So in the Windows 9x series of operating systems, when you did a Control Alt Delete to bring up the task bar, you got a nice little list of running programs, both third party applications and bits and pieces of Windows itself, all busily doing their thing and eating your resources as they did it. What does it look like when you try the same operation on XP?    You get a nice new window and it's still called the Task Manager, but what are all those tabs running across the top - Applications, Processes, Performance, Networking, and Users? The one called Users will list you; big deal. Networking will show nothing at all unless you have networked two or more computers together at your house or are currently located in your gainful employment environment. Applications will give you a list of the applications actually in use at the moment. In my case here, it says only Microsoft Word, plus the name of the file I'm working on, and QuickShelf, a dictionary, thesaurus, quotations sort of deal. Nothing else is loaded at the time so nothing else is listed. That's simple.    And the Performance tab? Heavens to Betsy! It's a combination CPU usage and history graph and a Page File (think old fashioned swap file) usage and history ditto, complete with percentages of your memory currently in use, how much is installed, how your system cache is handling the situation and lots of other stuff that nobody in the world except systems analysts really need to know. But it's interesting to look at. I suppose you could think of it much like old memory monitors and resource meters. The only thing is, you really don't need to monitor your resources any more because XP does such an improved job of using those resources that you don't have to worry about running out and causing your computer to go berserk. Blue Screens ofDeath are almost a thing of the past. I haven't seen one yet, although I've heard ofit happening to some people in some circumstances, peculiar circumstances generally.    But the Processes tab - there's an intriguing area. Windows XP is a very modular operating system. It's like, instead of one great big guy carrying your furniture out to the moving van, there are a whole bunch of little wiry fellas, each one with an end table or a kitchen chair under his arm, all working together. But the processes that are running at any given time are only a selection from another, longer list of modules called Services. And so what exactly are Services?    By definition, they are programs that run invisibly in the background. That can be said of a number of programs that act similarly such as anti-virus programs. The real difference is that Services load whether or not anyone logs into the computer, unlike a program that is launched from the Startup Folder under All Programs. They mayor may not be running, but they are loaded and eating at least a little bit of memory and CPU cycles. The ones that are actually doing something useful are then called processes. Clear? No. of course not; but that's the way it works, anyway. At the moment, out of the 86 Services available under my WinXP , I have 45 processes going with just the two programs listed above, Word and QuickShelf I just counted them.    So then the next question becomes, if we don't need them, why are they loaded in the first place? And the answer is that Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, has decided they can handle stuff like this better than we can. By and large, they're right, too. Many of the items, while listed as being available, are set to the Disabled status, by default, while other are set to Manual, meaning you can turn them on or off as your needs change. The majority are set to Automatic, i.e., they load all the time on the off chance they may be caned into play. But the whole truth of the matter is any of them can be changed by you, although you are truly playing with fire unless you know what you're doing. I know four or five people who really know what they're doing in this area, and I am not one of them.    But I've learned a little bit and that's a beginning. As we said, we can see the processes, (the ones that are doing something at the moment), just by caning up the Task Manager with a Ctrl Alt Del. We can see a complete list of Services by going to Start, Control Panel, Administrative tools, Services. You can reach this area even quicker by going to Start I Run, and typing services.msc .You arrive at the same place either way. You will see 5 tabs: Name; Description (what it does); Status (Is it doing it now? It win say "Started" if this is the case.);	Start Up Type (Manual, Automatic, or Disabled); and Log On As (Local Service, Local System, or Network Service). If you click the individual services, you get a much more thorough explanation of what it does than is shown in the Description column.    Should you want to change the Start Up Type, from say, Automatic to Manual, right click the Service name, click Properties, click the General tab, click Startup Type. There is a drop down box from which you can make your change -manual, auto, disabled. Will you garner a LOT of faster boot up speed from making a few of these changes, or even disabling some of the services? Very likely not, but some improvement possibly could be made, and if you only change one or two a time, slowly and carefully until you are sure nothing seriously wrong has occurred, it might be worth your time. And it's certainly an educational experience. Everything you understand better is all to the good because it makes you more confidant about fiddling with your computer and its settings. Personally, I'd export a copy of the Registry before messing with it, just in case.    Here is a list of some items that appear to be relatively safe to disable, assuming that you are a SINGLE USER OF A NON-NETWORKED MACIllNE. And remember, when you take your initial look at these items, you may find that your own default settings are already set to the most beneficial ones, depending upon which computer manufacturer you bought from or whether you upgraded from an earlier Windows version yourself.    Don't let the names of these items scare you. Go back to the area I mentioned and reread what each item does. For example, look at the description of the job "Computer Browser" does. It says it "maintains an updated list of computers on the network and supplies this list to computers designated as browsers. ". Is that you? Probably not. It will be a good idea to re-boot after making changes. Remember also, if your computer is running really slow, what you may well need is not a new tweak, but more memory or a newer, faster CPU, or even a new computer. Tweaks can only do so much, even the best of them. So on with the show.    Alerter    Clipbook (shares info with