Good points on disabling unneeded windows services. Also, disabling certain startup options through msconfig can help speed up your computer.

A good article on additional ways to speed up your computer is found here:

http:www.electricalfusion.comhow-to-speed-up-your-computer

Great tips, much faster. Thanks :)

there's a simpler way...
much simpler...
But a mac..

Thanks

This is really vary good and helpful. I would like to see some more information like this in the future.

keep it up.

Words are poor to thank.

i need the computer fast command please send me asap

Thanks for posting this info. It's important that folks have the right information so they don't waste time and money buying a new PC when a few simply steps could get them going again. I also have a website that provides this type of information: slow-pc.com, I hope folks will check it out.

I agree that you are able to speed up your computer startup and overall computer speed a bunch with this guide. Great article and great tips.

Whilst you can speed up your PC by 0.001 turning off services, it is actually the biggest myth in computing and over weeks can slow down your PC.

Look at articles written recently [circa mid 2008], it's a complete con.

It worked for me! Thanks a lot.

very nice...!is difficult too put all (or some) of this settings on vbs script or a .reg file?
thanx guys!

please help me with this! I really want to play last chaos but it lags too much... I cant find where to turn off all that stuff u showed! Please tell me exactly how to do it on a regular windows emachine!

re: john zaroff - problems with windows restore

If you haven't already figured this out in the 3 months since you posted,
Volume Shadow Copy: Disable it if you don’t backup using System Restore or Windows Backup.

Re-enable volume shadow copy and it restore should work for you.

Thanks a lot.

anoher good free program is
"glary utilities" download it free and it has everything in one interface that you could possibbly need to clean your computer.. another trick is to not compact your files...your computer takes longer to uncompact it and then recompaqct it....much better off buying a new harddrive and if you have two hardrives , put a pagefile on the secondary one and delete the pagefile on your primary harddrive... google it if you want to know how.!!

Interesting article

Thanks for the tips and the great comments as well. It is probably too much to expert from Microsoft for them to provide a decent user interface for us to safely manage this process.

Thanks it helps alot specially im an active gamer specially in online gaming now both internet and my pc speeds up a lot.. Keep it up!! Im gald someone posted this to help us "NOVICE"

BY: LUG , E-GAMES , IJJI , MMOSITE , Private Servers Inc.

Two services mentioned here should not be disabled.

DNS Client:
If you have internet access leave this enabled. This will disable DNS caching which will impair most internet activities.

Task Scheduler:
The prefetch system requires that it be enabled and set to Automatic. If disabled, prefetching will be crippled causing both boot and application launch times to be impaired. Over time this can become severe.

Larry Miller
Microsoft MCSA

I did most of the changes recommended. If I wasn't sure, I didn't make the change.

Now, I can't go back to a previous restore point. I have tred 3 system restore points that go back from 3 days to 40 days and the system will not allow the restore. Any suggestions?

thanks rockman for your help with ccleaner. any other freeware that helps speed up your comp

i agree do all the above- it does speed it up , but also download a programe called CCLEANER , yes it has two "c"s , it fixes registry -cookies- and other stuff in one click- my fist scan cleanned 659 MB of useless crap from my computer and after a defrag works really fast.

Should i download a Registry Cleaner. If so which one

Thank you Alex for your very responsible comment. I think there is indeed some risk for those who have little tech confidence in taking this up.

But when it comes to "so many safer, better ways to do it..." could you share with this community a few we could use?

You shouldn't disable services because it's incredibly risky. This article works with one set of hardware and software. That by no means ensures that it will work for everyone. Also, the people who would try to disable services would probably be those who don't know enough to really warrant it. Thus, the potential for error and negative impacts is exponentially greater. If you want to speed up your computer, there are so many safer, better ways to do it.

Very very helpful, it really worked ! in a moment I have a reall fast computer. I just wrote in a .txt what changes I did, so I always can return to the deault system. Tank you !

Thanx this really worked!!! This shud b used by people who se computers are dragging and making music skip when opening a program. Thanx again!!!!!

I've used this one

http:myquickpc.com

and it worked ok for me :)

-Ann

Dont Do it
It messed up my computer and it doesnt speed ur computer up wat so ever. it stayed the same

Couln't agree more!

However, it should also be noted that computers slow down because their users wantonly install applications and fill up both memory and disk space. So many applications add either a service or start up a program in the background or put something in the system tray.

Everything you put on to it just burns up more resources!

Thanks this really helps.To the people that said that it made your computer run slow than you disabled programs that your computer relys on that is why you really need to know how your programs effect your computer one of my computers is setup just for games and fun while the other is setup for work it helped the one for fun so be careful and know what programs your computer is set for.

I have started to use processlibrary.com's ProcessScanner on a regular basis. It tells you exactly what you have running, what each process is and which program it's associated with. It also tells you how resource-heavy each is, so you can see what is taking up capacity. It helps me to keep things running optimally.

http:www.processlibrary.com

There are two sides to this story:
1) People who turn off the right programs and use caution should experience an increase in speed if the problem isn't cause by an unkonwn service that is run as a result of a virus. The increase is determined by the amount of RAM that is available to the computer. Low RAM = a greater increase in speed as a result of this.

2) People who don't use caution and shut down the wrong programs. YES, I'm talking about you, the people who are probably reading this on there friends computer because theirs crashed as a result of their stupidity.

I disabled most of what is recommended here.

Browsing through folders is a LOT faster. Most softwares (word, adobe, explorer, ect) still open and run slowly.

Disabling the Security Center is the best thing ever!

This shouldn't affect your computer negatively, but as always make sure you have your important stuff backed up and possibly set a system restore point for if it all goes tits up.

OMG!This thing sucks.I tried it but my pc speed is still the same..........Negaive 10 stars!

This really screwed my computer up. ALl my shortcuts are gone. Most of my stuff won't start up, hope fully after I restore these settings, Itll work again.

My tip: DONT USe

If you use this be very careful...I had to restore as many things crashed...not for everyone, but good if you know what you are doing...do not play with settings unless you KNOW what you are doing!

I thought this was just one of those worthless speed-up your PC stuff. But this one really works. Helped a lot.

Thanks for posting this. ^^

WOW, what a difference. Wish I had done this a long time ago. The guy with the problems must have changed the wrong thing. I almost did by opening one next to the one I wanted.

I tried this man- my pc don't work no more, it makes it very very slow not faster. I turn on and it just goes brrr brrr and some stuff comes up and then nothing, I'm still waiting for the repair man, he say I shouldnt have meddled in the pc, marta my wife says I'm just a good for nothing. Man you really screwed up my life with your clever stuff here...

wow.... it really works

wow... my PC performance much faster than before... thanks a lot for being post this thread...

This has been a huge help for me. I am wondering if there are any UPDATES to this as we near the 2 year mark since this first came out? I have so much that simply isn't listed I'm not sure what to do with.

Thanks big time, Slydog22

WOW, I can't believe the difference, can you update this article every year!

Thank you for the thorough help on disabling uneeded features, much appreciated.

geezz! thanks a lot! very informative indeed! thank you so much!=)

Thanks for sharing these tips. I found out that my computer runs much smoother after shutting of un required services.

I have XP and after I switched to classic windows theme I saw an instant improvement in speed. Win XP super cool colors, themes, shadows and that nice stuff makes it run slow.

Thank You!
Karl

Excellent information, I noticed a big difference in my computer speed after going through the list, making the adjustments and rebooting. Thank you.

Hey Livia,
Thanks for that great article. Makes you value the net all over again.

I do however have a query that I hope you can help me with - The Remote Procedure Call service in my comp, is set to automatic. I tried to change it but the options are greyed out. What and how can I go about changing that? Please help.

Thanks,
Juhi

Wonderful article. Knew to do those defragment/cleanup utilities, but never knew how to disable windows services. Thanks a lot!

Wonderful article. Helped me boost my system speed. Also found that my drive was badly fragmented,never realised that its another important cause of slowdown.After a defrag, the performance improvement was very obvious.

since i disabled them i cant print on my pc wirelessly (i use the windows network thing i dont have wireless printer) anyway i did all the reccomendations for netwrks and all andd i changed them to auto w/ no success can u help me?? (just list all the possibilities of servics that could cause the problems) plz e-mail me at atbball98@aol.com

Thank you for the fantastic info. My computer is now running much faster after disabling unnecessary Windows services. You're doing the world a great service.

Thanks very much for your work on this; I've always tried to keep up to date on unnecessary services info, and your article allowed me to make adjustments to settings which had not been so clearly explained elsewhere. (In particular the

Thanks!!! Very Helpful.

Thanks ! It was really helpful.

Kudos to you man!!!! This is really cool and glad that you were (by trial and chance) able to figure out what it is that we need to do to keep systems running more efficiently!!! My machine is only a year old and believe me, a 2.6GB processor slowing down only after a year's time isn't funny, or even having almost 3G on memory for that matter...I'm so glad my machine is running like new again and why the heck windows has to keep adding unnecessary junk to run in the background is beyond me. Now my graphics designing work is ultimately rendering faster and so forth. Thanks a Bunch! and do feel free to contact me about any other things that can contribute towards keeping my PC at its peak performance!

this is super cool.. my system is now like an fi car. man its damn fast...

thank you i nevr knew you could that with your computer it saved me about a good 200 dollars!

Thank you for this very informative page. I have an older Acer 2.6ghz Pent4 that was running so slow, and having lock ups. I followed the instructions, and it's running with noticeable improvement on speed and stability.

But there is a Spanish version as well.

See the link on top of the page above the title.

http://tinyurl.com/yk5ky5

This really helped, even though my PC is in spanish so I had to do some deciphering. Thanks a lot!