wondering if is it true that whether the service is set to disabled or manual provides the same result in terms of performance? provided in manual it don't run, which probably won't ?

thus manual will be a safer choice?

Short answear 1: yes. Tho there are benefits to having a service disabled *if* you can also unregister the components that the "asking service" requests from the disabled service, ( by unregister i mean you remove the NEED for the service to ask for other services, in other words remove its dependencies on other services)

I am talking about common used, non logical, used system files. Such as dll files that are used evenly across several services, with no logic to explain why service A wants to use system files that there seems be no reason
for that to need, from any other Service B, C or even more.

and 2:-------------

I was going to write a more lengthy post on this but ill try to keep it short and give a tip instead.

If a service asks for a service that does not exist or isnt available, it can in some cases continue to do so unlimited amounts of times. This does of course mean that your windows will continue to ask for something
that isnt available, which causes latency spikes in system, and could also quickly build up a huge error log if that service logs itself. As an example tho.

A real world example :

VmWare Workstation, a software pieced used by many on these forums, continuously will ask for Performance logs and and alerts logging(to put it short).
However it will work very well without the service enabled, or even if the PLAA service does not exist (you deleted it). But it WILL continue to drop error messages in system logs.

This isnt good in my point of view. Sorry if this became too confusing. Its kind of complicated to try and explain imho.

hmm, let me see if i understood you correctly.

manual and disabled is the same provided, other services/programs don't try to run that service? - which might cause errors to be logged - if service is disabled?

however, if i can ensure i also disable the dependency, disabled will be better? - but this will be quite hard. by dependency u mean like i will check from http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm ?

in short, manual is the safer and better choice ?

Automatic = starts with windows and stays running all the time (in most cases -some services will stop when done)
Automatic (delayed start) = starts with windows after a delay (never seen a clear answer on exactly how long the delay is) and stays running all the time (in most cases -some services will stop when done)
Manual = will NOT start with Windows NOTE: service may still start with windows if another service that depends on it is set to automatic
Disabled = will not start with windows. will not start even if a dependant program/service requires it. this can have weird side effects on some services

manual is the safe choice. the automatic updates service on XP used to require itself to be set to Automatic for windowsupdate to work. i dont think its that way on vista but AFAIK its the only service that has to be set to automatic vs manual for everything to work properly

to find out default configs/side effects of changing services you can look here for an overly detailed look at vista services

yes and yes and yes.. Not hard, but tedious, it takes some time vs the seconds it takes to just set a service to manual.
I never would rely on 3d party resources like blackviper.

Manual = the fast solution, not necessarily better. When i was on vista i had it down to 8 services (i quit vista around june, vista just feels to slow nomatter what i (it's like 10ms ping extra online easily(with only tcp-ip even)), 4 if i only needed internet, audio and 3d( basically just gaming needs).

If you have visited my profile you could see i wrote down an example on this here
http://www.msfn.org/board/Multimedia-Class...587#entry765587

(i just got nostalgic, lol, read my reply to stuttering issues here:http://www.msfn.org/board/Multimedia-Class-Scheduler-t117564.html&view=findpost&p=766476#entry766476 also on page 6 or 7 i wrote something i still interesting, lol )

Which will show you that windows audio service needs nothing else then Rpcss service, which as i remember just about, if not all, every service on vista needs.Hm i think all services needs it, its the remote procedure call service, same name as on pre-vista windows, like xp and 2003 f.ex
If you read that thread you can see some people dont believe it, but i assure you it is really possible to take control over your own operating system.
I myself have stopped doing manual tweaking, and instead just writing everything down or exporting to registry file or writing down in batch files what to remove etc.

On another note, the point of removing dependencies, is that services can then truly be set to manual, but understand what i mean by that, if they then start, they start because they truly are needed. F.example the audio services on vista. You dont actually need them all just to get sound, one is for vista sound scheme, one for eax kind of driver plugins. You should be able to disable everyone but windows audio right away, and even that is possible to disable (or set to manual and it will not start because it isnt being used, but that will take a lot of registry deletions, instead of just removing the dependencies first).

Sorry if post was too long.