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Speed up your computer
No matter how fast the processor becomes or how cheap the memory gets, software vendors always manage to build applications that consume all available processing power, memory and other computing resources and always demand
Here's where I try to help by providing some tips and suggestions to optimise the usage or computing resources and increasing performance of your computer. Windows installs and starts up many services that may not be needed in a normal home environment or even in enterprise environment. Windows OS out of the box, is a trade-off between usability and optimum performance and security. Every person should configure and lock the system down to improve performance and security. In addition the OEM manufacturers install a lot of software that automatically starts up and takes up a lot of resources. But that is a different story altogether. I will not venture there right now as it has to be tackled on a case by case basis.
To speed up the computers without a lot of effort some of services should be disabled. I will list and explain the services in a phased manner so as to ensure that your computer does not break down and keeps running properly after services are turned off. To disable the services, first we need to start the Services Management console. In Windows XP, to start the console click on Start --> Settings --> Control Panel. If you are using the newer Category interface, click on Perfomance and Maintenance and click on Administrative Tools. In that look for an icon that looks like two engaged gears and is named as Services. If you use the Windows Classic interface, then double click on Administrative Tools and double click on Services to start the console. A short cut to start the console is to Click on Start --> Run and type in services.msc in the dialog window that appears.
You can scroll through the services to find out which are automatic and I am sure you will be amazed to find out what all is running on your computer. To start with you can safely disable the following services.
| Service Name | Description | Suggestion | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alerter | This service notifies selected users and computers of any administrative events or alerts | Disable | In a home environment, we don't run any applications that require receiving administrative alerts. |
| Application Management | This service processes installation, removal and enumeration requests for Active Directory IntelliMirror group policy programs | Disable | We do not use Active Directory (used only in enterprise environment) in home computers |
| ClipBook | This service enable clipbook viewer to store information and share it with remote computers | Disable | Even if you have more than one computer at home, this service should be turned off. This may give rise to some unknown security vulnerability |
| Computer Browser | This service maintains an up-to-date list of computers on your network, and supplies the list to programs that request it. The Computer Browser service is used by Windows-based computers that need to view network domains and resources. | Disable | Same as above. In case you need to browse other computers on your network, you can temporarily enable the service. |
| Distributed Link Tracking Client | This service ensures that shortcuts and OLE (Object linking and embedding) links continue to work after the target file is renamed or moved by maintaining links in the file system | Disable | This is more useful in a networked environment where documents, spreadsheets are shared and linked to other documents and spreadsheet. |
To disable a service, open the service's properties page by double clicking it and click 
That's all for this edition. I will list down more services with additional tips in the next edition.
- Category(s)
- Technology
- Windows
- Computer Tip
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- http://www.dharwadkar.com/weblog/services1/tbping
