Which services to disable to make Windows10 faster?(resource hogging services)

Evjl's Rain

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I disable a lot of services. Each contributes a little bit
the biggest difference is when I disable:
- sysmain (superfetch)
- Windows Search

you can visit here, scroll down and sort by the column "Tweaked" for desktop -> reference it (I still don't find it good enough)
I have my own list (a mess) but I find it stable for me, but I'm on windows 8.1
 

plat

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Antimalware Service Executable on weaker cpu/apu is a typical issue. That's why most people use third party antivirus. With more powerful processors and faster SSD, using Defender is not a problem at all. I run Insider build 19536.1000. It is the fastest and cleanest Windows build I've run to date. This will be the Spring release in 2020.

For faster startup, I look in Task Manager/Startup and then msconfig as adminstrator/Services tab/Hide all MS services and see what else I can safely disable. NVIDIA Container is one I've disabled with absolutely no harm done. It definitely slows things down at startup. Security apps and Intel XTU remain enabled but that's it. Startup on here is under 10 seconds with Fast Startup disabled. (y) Superfetch and Prefetch are deprecated and don't show in this Windows version.
 

TairikuOkami

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2- Windows 10 isn't Windows 7 with tons of crap services running in the background, now on Windows 10 most of those are set as Manual so there is less much needs to tweak them.
Surprisingly yes. On my current PC (SSD, 32GB RAM), I have actually noticed some slow down after tweaking vs clean setup, maybe due to some disabled pre-caching and other default optimizations, confirmed by getting a lower score in PCMark. Then again, the respond time seems to be faster, no surprise there, since there are 40 processes running vs 140 by default. I disable services mostly for security and privacy reasons. The same goes for disabling Windows Defender, as it was posted on MT before, running an AV can actually speed up a computer, also confirmed by benchmarks. Most likely, because it optimizes processes, sort of like process lasso, to keep the computer running smoothly with its realtime engine.
 

valvaris

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In term of Windows 10 there is a difference...

Home and Pro has the (Ad) Apps Pre-Installed depended on your Region.

On the Pro. and Ent. Versions you can use a gpo setting to disable those Apps even in future Updates.

Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Cloud Content ->
Do not show Windows tips [Enabled]
Turn off Microsoft consumer experiences [Enabled]

Another Trick is to use Windows 10 Provisioning:

Or uninstall over Powershell:

The last one is very dangerous and can break your current system - It is a Debloater that uses mainly Powershell to execute the commands but can also destroy Windows 10 Settings Menu... [Be careful!]

Best regards
Val.
 

bribon77

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I disable a lot of services. Each contributes a little bit
the biggest difference is when I disable:
- sysmain (superfetch)
- Windows Search
+1. I have deactivated Sysmain consumes a lot, I have other services deactivated but I do not remember now, among them the fax service, I do not use it, there are services that for a company are valid but for a normal user they are irrelevant.
 

show-Zi

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Will the fax service continue? This service is initially disabled.

At the time of xp, I was actively disabling the service, but recently the influence of update instability has increased, so I think that disabling is both a medicine and a poison Became.
But fax is turned off. Some services are turned off for security concerns, not performance.
 

Evjl's Rain

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Here's an article explaining why it's a bad idea to disable SysMain/SuperFetech.
The second comment in this article tells exactly what I experience on my PC in the past an present
I noticed my pc is significantly faster and more responsive after disabling sysmain/superfetch. It's also true on all other PCs I have ever touched. I don't care about theories or explanations, just believe in facts and every experience on my own PC
I can say sysmain may improve loading time of apps after we have been using the PC for a while but it will substantially decreased responsiveness in general, especially when we have older computers or we have just started the PC not long ago
When sysmain is on, I frequently see my disk usage is 100% and when I click on something, it takes time to respond while disabling it, all resources will be recruited for my task
 
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Sampei Nihira

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Dec 26, 2019
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In term of Windows 10 there is a difference...

Home and Pro has the (Ad) Apps Pre-Installed depended on your Region.

On the Pro. and Ent. Versions you can use a gpo setting to disable those Apps even in future Updates.

Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Cloud Content ->
Do not show Windows tips [Enabled]
Turn off Microsoft consumer experiences [Enabled]

Another Trick is to use Windows 10 Provisioning:

Or uninstall over Powershell:

The last one is very dangerous and can break your current system - It is a Debloater that uses mainly Powershell to execute the commands but can also destroy Windows 10 Settings Menu... [Be careful!]

Best regards
Val.

Have you read this interesting article?


It is not enough to uninstall the apps.
 

Lenny_Fox

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The effect of using Sysmain is that it may do it work so well, it puts drives to sleep. What surprises me (from own experience) is that it also seems to put SSD-drives to sleep (which does not makes any sense because they don't have moving parts), The effect some people experience when disabling Sysmain, may be based on this effect.
 

bribon77

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Here's an article explaining why it's a bad idea to disable SysMain/SuperFetech.

Thanks @roger_m for the article, I know how SysMain works.
But in my case not only Ram consumed but also disk .
And not only on my PC, but on my niece's too, and when I turned it off everything worked correctly.
 
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TairikuOkami

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People glorify Windows, but Windows is made by thousands of people, who make mistakes and the worst apart is, they sometimes refuse to fix them and say, that you do not know, what you are talking about. Memory management is one of them. When people complain: Windows is taking too much RAM, there is a bug, they simple reply: That it is, how it is supposed to work and they do not even look at the evidence, since they know everything.

Theory: 10 uses cached RAM to improve performance, if a user launches an app, that requires more RAM than it is available, 10 will free it. Cool.
Experience: The user launches an app and 10 will look at the free RAM and reports: Out of memory error or simply crashes the app without bothering to clean cached RAM, that is just sitting there, doing "nothing", so you could start a browser in 1 sec instead of 3. Very useful indeed.

Then there are memory leaks. Some might say, that they are caused by third party devs. Well it is true, that they are caused by bad drivers and some software, but the fact, that Windows can not fix them, is telling something. Cleanmem was developed because of Firefox memory leaks, that Windows could not take care of. Intelligent standby list cleaner was made, because even the latest 10 still fails to clean the memory properly.

I noticed my pc is significantly faster and more responsive after disabling sysmain/superfetch. It's also true on all other PCs I have ever touched. I don't care about theories or explanations, just believe in facts and every experience on my own PC
Exactly, tests, reviews, benchmarks are fine, but in the end, it is the personal experience, that matters, because every single computer is different, even if it is running the same software on the same hardware. I do not need someone to tell me, if something works or not. :)

Windows generally uses some old age techniques, like indexing for example, some people have issues with 100% CPU/HDD usage for hours, even days, just so that explorer can spit out the search results in 10 secs or more, while search utilities like Ultrasearch can do it in less than a second.
 

TairikuOkami

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Speak of the devil. Well the issue exists only since Win7, so it did not take them too long to admit it. I bet, it will cause just 50% CPU usage now.
Microsoft is introducing a new algorithm for the Windows Search indexer that makes it more efficient in terms of overall system performance, CPU and disk usage. The changes included in Windows 10 version 2004 (20H1) could finally address the complaints of high CPU and disk usage in the OS.

Microsoft says it carried out extensive research over the last year to identify critical problems in Windows Search. The research revealed that excessive disk and CPU usage are the two main general performance issues experienced by users.
 
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