Which programs are necessary?

[Bobh]

Hi -
I have Windows Vista Home Basic   32 bit.  When I go to "msconfig" and click on "services" I get a listing of a LOT of services.  I assume these are programs but I do not know what any of them do.   Some are running and some are stopped.  I am sure there are some I will never use as my use of my computer is very simple ( I don't play games, use facebook, etc).  Is there any place that I can go to to find out what each program does so that I can either keep it or delete it?   Thanks    Bob     

[Allan]

http://www.blackviper.com/category/guides/windows-vista/

[Bobh]

Allan -
Thanks    That appears to be what I was wanting.  I"ll print it out and study it carefully.   Thanks      Bob

[patio]

Don't fall down the rabbit hole reading too much into it...

             

[Allan]

Agreed. You asked a question and I answered it - but here's the rest...... If your system is working properly, LEAVE IT ALONE. I can't begin to tell you how many problems are caused by people "tweaking" the services.

[Bobh]

Allan  -
I will take your advice and leave well enough alone.   If it is not broke don't fix it.  I could not understand a lot of Blackviper so I will stay where I am.    Mark this solved.   Thanks     Bob

[TheShadow]

For the nube, leaving it alone is probably the best advise, but for us tech's, Black Viper is a wealth of information.

I used his advise to disable 24 services in XP and about 40 in win-7.  There's just a pot full of services that 99% of folks will never use or need in a million years.  Stick with the services mentioned in the "SAFE" column.

It was pretty easy to find all the services I wanted to disable and then write them into a batch file. 
It takes only about three seconds to run that batch file to disable every redundant service in the OS.
I have one for XP and one for Vista/Win-7.

Using MSCONFIG is great for minimizing the number of things starting up with Windows, but not good for
disabling services.  For that, you need to run "Services.msc".  (for tech's only)

* I've found that Windows 7, right out of the box, only runs at about 30-40% efficiency, due to all the overhead and SAFE defaults.  It's a jungle in there!

Cheers Mates!
 

[Allan]

Bobh - I strongly urge you to just leave things as they are and NOT to follow the advice in the above post.

[BC_Programmer]

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=410234&page=1&pp=30

[Bobh]

Hi -
Thanks for the replies even after saying I was going to stay with what I have.   Somethings that were suggested were too complicated for me (I don't know much about computers).  Another forum suggested that I Google each program to find out what it does but that didn't really help me decide if I could delete any.  Once again I say thanks.  You guys have helped me a lot over the months but in this case I'm going to stay where I am.     Bob