Murder by service, 1-2-3

“But my new system’s so slo-o-o-w.”

That's among the worst complaints for the consultant looking to get out the door within the next half hour. The complaint never has a single root cause; it's usually a combination of installed software and a posse of native services that run by default. A good way to minimize this particular whiny buzz in your ear is to take a page out of Tony Soprano’sbook and start eliminating enemies of the Good Network Family by removing unnecessary Windows XP services — and in case you’re wondering, the system installs 36 services by default. Massacring a few of these bad boys speeds up not only boot time, but often general performance, as well.

Disabling a service is simply a matter of opening the Control Panel, hitting the Services icon and disabling selected services in their Properties box. Pushing these changes out to users can be a desk-to-desk jaunt, or a properly configured Ghost-ing episode.

To begin, as Sasserso aptly demonstrated, Automatic Windows Update is a prime candidate. In any enterprise with more than five machines, it's best to push out your updates after testing them, so there’s simply no need for each workstation to track this stuff on its own. And as a side benefit, you’re closing off what’s rapidly becoming a new security hole in your network. Bang, bang!

Related to Windows Update is the Upload Manager. This stool pigeon sends Microsoft information about the workstation so that Redmond’s resources can go to work hunting up new drivers for everything you just spent weeks tweaking so it would finally work together. Users can then automatically download the new drivers using Update and mess up your entire asset list, if not the machine itself. Personally, my workstations are tested prior to releasing any new drivers into production, and I’ve been much happier that way in the long run. If you’re killing Update, murder this one, too.

Another service you should certainly kill regardless of performance reasons is Remote Registry. This service allows the user to access and modify the registry of other systems on the network. Fabulous for administrators, it's a flaming horror in the hands of malevolent users or even someone having a Curious Georgemoment. Make it die.

My next most-hated enemy is Messenger Service. OK, if you’re running Live Communications Serveror have some similar need for IM, then I'll be outvoted. But for the rest of the country that simply uses IM to keep in touch with relatives and online dating services, I say do those things from home. It’s a resource hog, it’s constantly annoying users with pop-up dialogs, it’s usually not for business, and, yeah, it’s another security hole. Two behind the ear.