Speed up your computer - 5

In this installment of the series of posts, I continue with some more services that can be disabled on your Windows XP computer.

Service Name	Description	Suggestion	Remarks
Network DDE DDSM	This service manages Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) network shares	Disable	DDE network shares will not be available. Frankly did you know what DDE stands for? Even if you do, do you really know what it does? I don't so I keep it disabled. It has not had any effect on the operation of my computer other than freeing some memory
Network Location Awareness (NLA)	This service collects and stores network configuration and location information and notifies applications when this information changes. This service is a part of ICS	Disable	Services such as ICS and ICF will not work. Again as explained in earlier posts in this series, we are disabling that as well.
NTLM Security Support Provider	This service allows users to log on to the network using NTLM	Disable	Users with versions of Windows prior to Windows 2000 will be unable to log in to the network. Again in a home network you really don't need all these overheads.
Performance Logs and Alerts	This service collects performance data for the computer or other computers and writes it to a log or displays it on the screen	Disable	Performance information will no longer be logged or displayed. This information is not required for home based or even end user computers.
Portable Media Serial Number	This service retrieves the serial number of any portable media player connected to this computer	Disable	Protected content might not be downloaded to the device.