Solved Which services do you recommend to disable? here is my list

pseymour · May 26, 2025

@XxXxX And my comment was a response to your comment about backups, immediately preceding, not your post from five hours ago.

XxXxX · May 26, 2025

pseymour said:
@XxXxX And my comment was a response to your comment about backups, immediately preceding, not your post from five hours ago.

"Yes, you can backup the registry yourself, or you can take a full system image yourself, or you can write down the changes you make on paper. All of those things, while true, entirely miss the point that was being made."

may i enquire about the the bold part highlighted, please.
as i most certainly seem to have missed the point.
best of luck, Steve ..

kelper · May 26, 2025

My laptop only has 4GB of RAM and functions very well with no need to disable services. Windows is doing a thousand things a second and works best if you stop second-guessing it. Would you buy a new car and start ripping out it's electronics?

Registry backups are almost useless today when image backups are so fast and will fix almost any self-inflicted tweaking.

Sheikh · May 26, 2025

Levitate11 said:
Sys Internal's Autorun utility

hmmm such a good toolkit
thank you

garlin · May 26, 2025

The problem is an image backup reverts many changes, and not just what you wanted to fix. It’s like choosing a jackhammer when a screwdriver would suffice. Users should be backing up to preserve user data, but it’s not intended to be a rollback for making a tweak that should have a simple undo logged.

Those of us with IT backgrounds tend to deal with the law of unintended consequences. A guiding principle is to always make the smallest change needed to get something done, and not to create more work for yourself or someone else.

These debates will never end, but reflect why there’s opposing camps.

Levitate11 · May 26, 2025

Sheikh said:
hmmm such a good toolkit
thank you

Their Process Explorer is also a must have.

kelper · May 26, 2025

garlin said:
The problem is an image backup reverts many changes, and not just what you wanted to fix. It’s like choosing a jackhammer when a screwdriver would suffice. Users should be backing up to preserve user data, but it’s not intended to be a rollback for making a tweak that should have a simple undo logged.

Those of us with IT backgrounds tend to deal with the law of unintended consequences. A guiding principle is to always make the smallest change needed to get something done, and not to create more work for yourself or someone else.

These debates will never end, but reflect why there’s opposing camps.

If you do daily backups and something then goes wrong, surely restoring from that image is far more effective than trying to diagnose the problem.

Catnip · May 26, 2025

I do not deactivate or remove services. That way my computer doesn't blow up.

unifex · Jun 8, 2025

To each their own. I definitely deactivate services and scheduled tasks that I find unnecessary for me.

The last two words are important. It's my computer and it should run the way it suits me. The default Windows installation is designed to work in a very large number of scenarios, but it's not optimized for me specifically. For that reason, it includes programs and services, that are not useful to me, although they may be essential to someone else. It is unreasonable to expect Microsoft (or any other vendor) to satisfy every single one of us. I doubt that was ever their purpose (in fact, I am certain it was not, their primary purpose is to make money for their shareholders). If someone is happy with the out-of-the-box experience, great. If I want to trim down the number of programs running on my machine, it's my right to do so. In fact, I found this thread by searching the internet about the MareBackup scheduled task: it appears unnecessary to me, but before disabling it, I still search to find out its purpose and whether disabling it will actually break something. The latter is unfortunately important - Microsoft does not provide adequate documentation. There is no way of simply opening a manual and reading what does the task, e.g. MareBackup do.

So thanks to @Sheikh for starting the thread and providing his list.

Now, to answer his original question, I have the following services as disabled (some of them were disabled to begin with):

TraderGary · Jun 8, 2025

Catnip said:
I do not deactivate or remove services. That way my computer doesn't blow up.

You gotta love this feline! My sentiments exactly. I buy a computer with enough power and memory that I don't need to cripple anything.

Edwin · Jun 8, 2025

Many Services have underlying dependencies..., you start messin with them aggressively and some things are bound to go to sh*t.

Levitate11 · Jun 8, 2025

Yeah, some services have interactions. If in doubt, leave it. But some are unnecessary.

I'm not as aggressive as I was back in the days when we were overclocking 386 chips to eek out a little more performance. But I still trim the fat. I try not to trim too much at one time, so if something goes south, you can reverse it and fix the issue.

XxXxX · Jun 8, 2025

after the last Windows preview update which placed 10 extra services in the service menu and 2 extra in the service registry
9x hyper-v and 1x activeX in the service menu .. 1x hyper-v and 1x xboxhib in the service registry which don't show in the service menu.

i know have 70 services disabled via the service menu and 5 services that are related but only in the service registry
making a total now of 75 services disabled.

these services are disabled on 2 home AiO desktops which are both running just fine.
best of luck, Steve ..

gunrunnerjohn · Jun 8, 2025

I really don't see the point for the most part. I may disable services that actually do things I don't want done, but other than that, I leave them alone.

What's really the point, my processor idles at 2-3%, and I have tons of memory.

Spacer1 · Jun 27, 2025

I'm old. MS pushes to much is why many people disable services, not necessarily to gain performance. I use a desktop, and have no need for much of the stuff. I don't want my PC linked to my phone. I don't want apps on my phone and wouldn't miss having it. I have no touch input so why all the tablet features? I don't SSH into anything, that used to be an optional component but not any more. I don't want my PC listening to me and my conversations. And many of the services start regardless of whether your settings should require it to run. It's just adding more vulnerability to your system. And it's getting worse all the time. Seems more GP settings get ignored by MS anyways as time goes on. I tinker with Linux but I'm to old and health problems make it hard for me to pick it up easily. I stayed on 7 until just 2 years ago when it got to be to much trouble keeping browsers working. Simple is better. And I don't want MS controlling my PC.
Tip: Export the services to a text file before you start playing around with them.

Levitate11 · Jun 27, 2025

Spacer1 said:
I'm old. MS pushes to much is why many people disable services, not necessarily to gain performance. I use a desktop, and have no need for much of the stuff. I don't want my PC linked to my phone. I don't want apps on my phone and wouldn't miss having it. I have no touch input so why all the tablet features? I don't SSH into anything, that used to be an optional component but not any more. I don't want my PC listening to me and my conversations. And many of the services start regardless of whether your settings should require it to run. It's just adding more vulnerability to your system. And it's getting worse all the time. Seems more GP settings get ignored by MS anyways as time goes on. I tinker with Linux but I'm to old and health problems make it hard for me to pick it up easily. I stayed on 7 until just 2 years ago when it got to be to much trouble keeping browsers working. Simple is better. And I don't want MS controlling my PC.
Tip: Export the services to a text file before you start playing around with them.

I'm right there with you, buddy. Stayed on Win 7 forever... until my laptop died and my matching backup laptop wouldn't run more than five minutes. Gave in and bought a new laptop, which pushed me into Win 11. Enter Microsoft's "you need all this slushware and telemetry".

It's nice to be up-to-date on programs and not have to deal with running old versions/avoiding updates. But it took me almost a month to get Win 11 beaten into shape where it made me happy. I know there are remaining MS excesses still in there, but at least I killed the ones that an average former techie can find.

Timbo128 · Apr 1, 2026

Winuser said:
I'm in the group that leaves all of the services as default. Years ago I use to use the recommendations from Black Viper. With the power and speed of todays computers I don't see any benefits of changing any of the settings.

Old thread, I get it.....was just playin' the Services.msc game and got bit in the long run....lot of dependencies can, and will, get mucked up in 25H2.

Yeah, ol' Black Viper....good stuff back in the XP-7 days. He had 3 packages he recommended from mild to wild. The full on wild package would trigger more warnings and errors in Event Viewer. We always used his middle of the road recommendations with zero ill effects.

Thanks!

abactuon · Apr 1, 2026

Managing Per-User Services in Windows | Windows OS Hub

In Windows, per-user services are special services created for each user when they log on to the system and deleted upon the user’s logoff. They implement personalized tasks (like search…

woshub.com

Do not disable CaptureService and DevicesFlow if you use Bluetooth.
If you disable DevicesFlow, Settings > Bluetooth Devices > Add device doesn't work

PerpetualCycle · Apr 2, 2026

No windows services. Like others I do not want to deal with even more Windows issues than there already are out of the box,
I disable some third party services like some Asus and Intel that are not necessary or are bloat.

Timbo128 · Apr 2, 2026

PerpetualCycle said:
No windows services. Like others I do not want to deal with even more Windows issues than there already are out of the box,
I disable some third party services like some Asus and Intel that are not necessary or are bloat.

Yep....in my case, since we're not a gamer, those XBox items were the first services to disable....along with the Connected User Experiences and Telemetry, for me anyway.

Solved Which services do you recommend to disable? here is my list

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