Is there a utility that can block specific apps from adding their background services to the Registry?

Apps like CCleaner, AOMEI, Easeus, MiniTool Partition Wizard, all the ones for working with creating or changing partitions, all the apps from drive manufacturers, backup - they all want to sneakily add themselves as a background process every time they're run or updated.

I'd love to have an app that runs as a background process that I can add select apps to, to have it hard block then silently from adding themselves as a background process.

I'm about to quit using CCleaner because now they've taken away its listing under startup so you can't use CCleaner to delete CCleaner from starting with Windows. Even worse, the portable version does it and updates itself. That's defeating the purpose of a portable app, to be used and leave no permanent trace of itself.

As for all those disk drive apps, they all have free versions that do some things but not other things, but together the free ones can do everything so there's no need to pay for one.

Services can be controlled by command line options
net stop {service name as displayed}
sc config {service name as displayed} start= disabled

The above commands first stop the service (if it's running) then the second line command disables the service from starting

As an example ....
HP is a serious offender in adding (and using driver updates to restart them) unnecessary services that simply duplicate functions/services that are either unnecessary or already provided by Windows OS. As a consequence, I run these commands every so often
open CMD window in Admin mode
copy and paste the following commands from a saved text file (as a block)
net stop HPAppHelperCap
sc config HPAppHelperCap start= disabled
net stop HPDiagsCap
sc config HPDiagsCap start= disabled
net stop HpTouchpointAnalyticsService
sc config HpTouchpointAnalyticsService start= disabled
net stop HPNetworkCap
sc config HPNetworkCap start= disabled
net stop HPSysInfoCap
sc config HPSysInfoCap start= disabled

As for software, I also occasionally have to do the same for Adobe Acrobat because I'd prefer my installed version not to be phoning home

I suggest you to use alternative applications for them.

I know how to block DLL and EXE files from accessing the internet, but I'd like to know if there's a definitive answer to your question. That's why I'm writing this reply, to follow up on the thread.

idgat said:

Services can be controlled by command line options
net stop {service name as displayed}
sc config {service name as displayed} start= disabled

The above commands first stop the service (if it's running) then the second line command disables the service from starting

As an example ....
HP is a serious offender in adding (and using driver updates to restart them) unnecessary services that simply duplicate functions/services that are either unnecessary or already provided by Windows OS. As a consequence, I run these commands every so often
open CMD window in Admin mode
copy and paste the following commands from a saved text file (as a block)
net stop HPAppHelperCap
sc config HPAppHelperCap start= disabled
net stop HPDiagsCap
sc config HPDiagsCap start= disabled
net stop HpTouchpointAnalyticsService
sc config HpTouchpointAnalyticsService start= disabled
net stop HPNetworkCap
sc config HPNetworkCap start= disabled
net stop HPSysInfoCap
sc config HPSysInfoCap start= disabled

As for software, I also occasionally have to do the same for Adobe Acrobat because I'd prefer my installed version not to be phoning home

Click to expand...

You can create a .bat file with the above and run it at Login with task scheduler in case an update reactivates the service.

Here is how you can do it with a powershell sccript, just put the servicenames in the $svcs list: