This tutorial shows you how to boost performance by stopping and disabling unnecessary services on Windows XP Professional systems with Service Pack 1. In the end, 56 services could be disabled; 14 services could be defined to run in "Manual" mode; only 17 services need to be defined to run in "Automatic" mode.

With less services running, your system will need less than 250MB of memory to start up. This will greatly boost your system performance.

The suggested minimum set of running services can still allow you to visit Internet and use all local network services.

Summary of suggested services settings for Windows XP Pro SP1 system:

Service Name	Startup Type	Usage Note
Alerter	Disabled	Used for delivering local network alerts.
Application Layer Gateway Service	Disabled	Base service for Windows firewall or Internet Connection Sharing.
Application Management	Disabled	May needed for removing applications.
ASP.NET State Service	Disabled	Used by ASP .NET applications.
ATI HotKey Poller	Disabled	Support hot keys to control multiple monitors.
Automatic Updates	Disabled	Automatically getting system updates from Microsoft Websites.
Background Intelligent Transfer Service	Disabled	Used by Automatic Updates to transfer files.
Broadcom ASF IP monitoring service v6.0.3	Automatic	Installed as part of Broadcom network devices.
ClipBook	Disabled	Used by ClipBook Viewer.
COM+ Event System	Disabled	Used for System Event Notification.
COM+ System Application	Disabled	Used to support COM+ components.
Computer Browser	Disabled	Maintains a list of computers on the local network.
Cryptographic Services	Automatic	May needed for Windows Media Player.
DHCP Client	Automatic	Needed for Internet connections.
Distributed Link Tracking Client	Disabled	Used for tracking files over local networks.
Distributed Transaction Coordinator	Disabled	Used for local network resource management.
DNS Client	Automatic	Used to resolve DNS names.
Error Reporting Service	Disabled	Used to send error reports to Microsoft support center.
Event Log	Automatic	This is an essential service.
Fast User Switching Compatibility	Disabled	Used for switching between logged in users.
Fax	Disabled	Used for sending and receiving fax.
FTP Publishing Service	Disabled	Used to allow other computers to download files.
Help and Support	Disabled	Used for getting on-line support documents from Microsoft.
Human Interface Device Access	Disabled	Used to support hot buttons on special input devices.
IIS Admin	Disabled	Used to manage Internet Information Services.

Continue to Part II.