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Services tweaking guide for Windows 7

Posted: 10 May 2024, 15:47
by K4sum1
I have finally gotten around to making this, it's only been however many years I've been mentioning making a post like this.

This post will go over services included in Windows 7 that you can disable for more performance, privacy, and security. This list is based off of our Windows 7 Updated v5 ISO. You may have other services not listed here which could be from different OS components being enabled or drivers or software you install. I recommend doing this on a fresh install without any other programs or drivers to more easily tell.

To open the Services configurator, press the windows key, type services.msc, and press enter.

Some services are accessible only by registry. These usually have short words with no spaces. To disable these, you will need to find them in regedit (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\(service)) and set Start to 4.

1: These should be disabled on every install
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1.1: Disabled by default
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2: Useless for most users
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3: Conditional
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4: Do not disable:
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Common tasks you may want to do that could be broken after applying these tweaks:

Bluetooth: Enable Bluetooth Support Service.

Enabling features: Enable Windows Modules Installer and Windows Update.

Windows Update: Enable Background Intelligent Transfer Service, Windows Modules Installer, and Windows Update.

For other tasks like accessing a SMB share or IKEv2 VPN, check 3: Conditional as services that impact those tasks are described there.

For ease of use, the services from list 1 and 2 are compiled here into a registry file. There is no file for 3 as those should be applied manually depending on what you want.

Services tweaking guide for Windows 7

Posted: 26 May 2024, 06:17
by K4sum1
Updated the post with new services. These require regedit to disable, see above for instructions. (aside from UPnP Device Host)

1: MRxDAV (Default: Manual/3)
This seems to be WebDAV, which looks to be useless to most people. Blackbird recommends disabling it, so I think it's fine

2: srv (Default: Manual/3)
Seems to only be used for server tasks, doesn't look to impact SMB (2) NAS.

UPnP Device Host (Default: Manual)
Blackbird recommends disabling this. Seems to be some weird networking thing. Not sure what it impacts.

3: MRxSMB, MRxSMB10, and MRxSMB20 (Default: Manual/3)
MRxSMB10 seems to be the SMB 1.0 driver, but disabling it breaks accessing SMB 2 shares. So I've lumped all these together as they're all SMB.

NetBT (Default: Automatic (Delayed Start)/1)
NetBIOS is a security risk, however required for SMB NAS.

tunnel (Default: Manual/3)
Looks to be related to IPv6, though not entirely sure.

Services tweaking guide for Windows 7

Posted: 17 Jul 2024, 10:48
by kloak
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) (Default: Manual)
Not sure what this does, it doesn't seem to effect anything.
Pretty sure it's meant for scanner software/devices.

Also, effect is a noun, affect is a verb. :P

Services tweaking guide for Windows 7

Posted: 15 Oct 2024, 01:44
by K4sum1
I have moved Multimedia Class Scheduler from 4 to 2.

Services tweaking guide for Windows 7

Posted: 16 Oct 2024, 05:09
by K4sum1
I have moved it to 3 since it appears to break audio but only after a reboot which is weird.

Services tweaking guide for Windows 7

Posted: 17 Oct 2024, 10:19
by K4sum1
To not jump the gun this time, maybe PnP-X IP Bus Enumerator could be disabled under 2. I'm going to try it on my main and see if anything changes.

Services tweaking guide for Windows 7

Posted: 19 Oct 2024, 09:51
by luk3Z

Services tweaking guide for Windows 7

Posted: 19 Oct 2024, 09:52
by K4sum1
What started this all was Black Viper's configurations. I'd probably consider those obsolete by now but idk. Maybe I missed something.

Services tweaking guide for Windows 7

Posted: 19 Oct 2024, 12:47
by K4sum1
So I found a way to disable MMCSS but keep Windows Audio. I'm still keeping it under 3 as I'm not sure if this could cause any issues. See the attached 2.5 registry file to disable it. Also after some research, I also moved PnP-X IP Bus Enumerator to 2.