Ikonboard » Printable Version of Topic » Disabling Win2K services = BOOM!

Forum: Geek Forum
Topic: Disabling Win2K services = BOOM!
started by: damien_s_lucifer

Posted by damien_s_lucifer on Feb. 07 2001,04:51

I just went through the Services manager in Win2K and disabled a lot of shit I thought I didn't need...

bad idea... DO NOT DISABLE EVENT LOG under ANY circumstances!!! Your computer will start slow as hell and nothing will work properly. You'll think it's some other stupid service, and when you try and start that service it won't obey... just give your error -8768964 (made that one up) and no other information.

Then, when you enable Event Log, things mysteriously start working properly again. And get this... THESE SERVICES DON'T SHOW "Event Log" AS A DEPENDENCY!!!!

I also managed to kill all my desktop icons, dial-up networking, and drag & drop. I finally got dialup to dial but no DNS...

anyway, after much messing around and basically starting everything that's installed, my computer is working normally again. But I feel inferior knowing that my machine is not fine-tuned...

so does anyone know what the hell is safe to stop? Thanks.

Posted by ASCIIMan on Feb. 07 2001,07:55

Advice:
In Windows NT/2K

services = 'stuff that's supposed to run all the time, whether you're logged on or not'.

This means drivers, critical error-logging stuff, network protocals, etc. Plus the occasional program (i.e. disk defragmenters, antivirus programs) that needs to access data structures or hardware directly.
Don't mess with services unless you know what you're doing. Bad things happen.

Depending on why you want to 'tune' your system, I would recommend using Windows 98 or learning a bit more about how Windows NT/2000 actually works.

This message has been edited by ASCIIMan on February 08, 2001 at 02:56 AM

Posted by WillyPete on Feb. 07 2001,11:16

Make sure nothing's in your start up or in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run section of the registry that you don't need to run at startup. Open Task Manager (CtrlAltDel) and check the processes. Basic rule: Anything still here, you usually need, especially if you see numbers next to it changing value.
If you still want to, you can eliminate what you don't want by ending the process and seeing how much you can do for the next hour. Much safer than disabling stuff.
Better yet, write down the process names and search Microsoft's knowledgebase. You'll get loads of info on the processes involved.

Posted by jim on Feb. 07 2001,13:49

Rather than re-writing an article that's already been written, go < here >.

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jim
Beauty is in the eye of the Beer Holder
< Brews and Cues >

This message has been edited by jim on February 08, 2001 at 08:50 AM

Posted by askheaves on Feb. 07 2001,15:58

That's a good looking article, Jim. gonna read it later. Do you know if there is one for Win2K Server? That's where my troubles lie right now.

Went through on one of our servers last night and we started disabling unneeded services. All of a sudden, upon reboot, our License Server for Pro-E started eating 100\%CPU indefinitely. Had to kill it off completely. It's weird because it's the same program (different version) as the one that's doing our Rational Licensing, and that one had no problem.

Services are dangerous, but at least most of the, are pretty low impact in terms of performance on a Professional box. One tip (good point on the Run RegKey, WP) is to run the task manager with the following columns selected:
Image Name | PID | CPU | Mem Usage | VM Size | Threads

These are the ones that I use and they give me a really good picture of what each process is really using for resources. Especially useful is that VM Size column, because it's the memory that a process is using IN ADDITION to what's in the Mem Usage column.

Posted by jim on Feb. 07 2001,16:20

quote:
Originally posted by askheaves:
Image Name | PID | CPU | Mem Usage | VM Size | Threads

You run almost the same in TM as me. In addition to the VM, I put Page Faults just before that. For me it's more important to see the activity taking place on the disk, rather than the actual disk space being reserved. It may be holding 6 Gigs worth of space (and if you are running MSSQL 7 it will if your page file is that big) but so long as there is no activity taking place, I just ignore it....

Are you talking about the Windows License Server taking up 100\% CPU??

What are you using the server for, and I'll point you to the Best Practice article which may be what you are looking for...

------------------
jim
Beauty is in the eye of the Beer Holder
< Brews and Cues >

Posted by askheaves on Feb. 07 2001,18:12

I see how right you are on the VM issue. I'll remember that.

The problem was that we were using FlexLM license Manager (AKA Globetrotter... used by a few different companies for floating licenses). It's not a big deal since we're moving it to another computer anyways, and we'll see what recreates the problem there if it comes up again.

More than anything else, I wanted to see if there was an article similiar to that other one, but expanded to server services as well (disclaimer, i haven't had time to read the first one yet... the person controlling our licenses for Pro-E throughout the nationwide company no longer works for our company... so, we can't make any changes )