Windows 10: Recommended Source That Tells Me Which *Automatic* Services To Disable

Hello, so I've been looking around for a recommended source that tells me which *Automatic* services that I can disable.
I've looked on YouTube, yet most of the videos show me which Manual services to disable. That doesn't really help me, since those services are already not running nor taking up system resources. I want to know which services that are already running (that run automatically) that I can disable to free up system memory.

There are 67 (sixty seven) svchost.exe files that are running. That's just ridiculously stupid. I remember when there was about 10 svchosts when Windows XP was installed. I don't need sixty seven services that run in the background to take up system resources. But also not just those; I gotta disable other ones too like ctfmon, LockApp?, RuntimeBroker?, and a few other ones. There are many duplicates too like csrss, dllhost, fontdrvhost, RuntimeBroker, etc. I'm the only one that uses the computer with one account only.

Help me out please? Thanks

:)

 

Computer shows blue screen and tells me that atikmdag.sys failed.

Hi Brenda,



The above issue might occur due to non-updated/incompatible device drivers installed in the computer.



Before we assist further, I would like to ask you a few questions:

• Since when are you facing the above issue? Did you make any recent system changes?
• Are you facing the above issue on performing a specific task on the computer?
• What is the exact error message displayed on the computer?
• Did you try booting the computer in Safe mode?

Boot the computer in Safe mode with networking and check if similar issue persists on the computer.



Safe mode is a diagnostic mode that starts your computer with limited drivers necessary to run Windows. The words
Safe Mode appear at the corners of your monitor to identify which Windows mode you are using. Logging into
Safe mode will help in diagnosing if the issue is caused due to the corrupted user profile or the services disabled on the PC.



Select appropriate options to boot the computer into Safe Mode.
Reboot the computer to exit from Safe mode.



To know more about Safe mode, refer to the article on
Windows Startup Settings (including safe mode).



Write to us with the answers to the above questions and the status of BSOD error received on the computer in the same post for further assistance.
Your reply is most important for us to ensure we assist you accordingly.



Thank you.

 

Anniversary Update

Hi Andre,

I had problems after the AU so I have reverted to the previous build.

In order to prevent an automatic update, I have changed the setting for Windows Update to Disabled.

Can you please tell me which setting is the default, or which setting you recommend using if/when I want to enable the service?

Options:

Automatic (Delayed Start),

Automatic,

Manual

Disabled

Thank you,

Gerry Feenan

 

Yes i would like to know as well

Many Thanks

DME

 

I would just leave the services alone unless you really know what you are doing.

 

Steve C:
Hence the reason why I am asking on here. I want to see if anyone knows a recommended source that knows a lot about the automatic services and which ones can be safely disabled. I really appreciate it.

 

You could consider turning off Windows features not needed.I would also review any 3rd party services by using the Services tab of msconfig (don't show MS services) or better still use the excellent utility Autoruns to review what 3rd party software is running and disable those you don't need.

Otherwise, I would leave the Services settings well alone.

 

I know a fair amount about Windows computers. Yes, I have disabled practically all my 3rd party services, and only have a few programs that run during the Startup process. Everything that I have customized uses very low memory, yet the addition of the memory of all the svchost processes does take up a fair amount of MB.. roughly somewhere in between 100,000 mb - 200,000 mb. The majority of that is, for sure, a waste of memory that I can be using in the other projects that I do on the computer.

I just hope there's somebody out there that can link me to a good source that is very well informed about services that are completely useless.

 

100,000 MB = 100GB! I don't think so.

 

Okay my mistake... you right, I meant KB. You could've understood what I meant and I made a typo. Look I'm lightly buzzed off my beer at this hour, but please, let's leave this topic open for someone who can help me with what I first posted above.

 

The following is a current list of System services to disable on Windows 10

Zero

Even the Black Viper Site does not recommend any messing with the system services, things have moved on from XP where services maybe could be disabled to help on systems used for gaming in some circumstances.

Black Viper will list what each service process does and in very rare occasions in specialist applications some services could be set to manual if they caused issues with specialist software They should never be disabled as this prevents the call to start when required by something else which may lead to a system crash or even Damage.

Things have changed since the 1990's when XP was designed, and of course it was in mainstream use for far longer than planned so a few original services did become obsolete especially as it was a port of NT/Win2000 that was not designed for playing games but to run businesses and industrial processes so some enterprise level services were standard

 

I understand what you mean, but I'm sure there's more than zero system services that can be disabled that can cause better computer performance. I'm just saying that there are times of projects that require me to open many Google Chrome tabs, which takes up a lot of memory. I don't need useless services in the background to take up the system memory; I need to dedicate it for my projects.
Does anyone know of videos that show automatic services that can be disabled?

 

All I can suggest is that you check out the Black Viper site - the descriptions there may allow you to find something that you feel you can do without,

Please take heed of my warning about disabling services being dangerous.

If a service is not being used a modern operating system, like anything from Vista onwards, will "sleep" the process to free the memory and CPU usage for user processes, the best thing to control memory and CPU usage in windows 10 is the system itself, It "knows" more and is quicker to react than any human.

Back in the 90's & 00's I was developing industrial control systems where speed was critical, and I did disable services to a great extent but this was on systems that only did one job to do and in some cases never displayed the windows screens at all for months at a time, so did not need a lot of services. For example what use is a screen saver on a system that could never have the screen not displaying status and warnings

These days I do on occasion stop and prevent a service from running, but only for diagnostic purposes, and the majority of these are third party

 

Did you look at this? Black Vipers Windows 10 Service Configurations | Black Viper | www.blackviper.com

Or a better resource is from forum member @TairikuOkami who has a set of tweaks here you can look at: [Batch] Windows Tweaks - Pastebin.com (from his/her sig). You may not want to do all of them (up to you) but the script is well documented and easy to understand.

Problem with disabling services is that the dependencies aren't really clear or documented. You can end up breaking something seemingly completely unrelated but as long as you keep track of what you are doing you can always reverse it. Note, some services (BITS IIRC) will start even if disabled.

Whether disabling services will make any (non placebo) difference is debatable though. Most likely you'll spend a lot of time breaking things for no benefit but it can be quite fun to do that sometimes. I think so anyway.

 

ctfmon - can be shut off by disabling "Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service"

LockApp - appears when a computer becomes locked, like when it goes to sleep and you have locking enabled

RuntimeBroker - it can not be disabled, it is required to open Settings/Start/etc

fontdrvhost - is basically a sandbox for fonts, if I got that correctly

dllhost/csrss - are required system processes, they run multiple times, as needed

You can use CleanMem Free to prevent memory leaking. For the record Windows "cleans" the RAM, not Cleanmem.

Well said. Sometimes it is not worth the effort. It is a trial and error and with an each upgrade MS changes rules. *Rolleyes