[trodas]

I would like to share something about WinXP SP1.0a optimizing. The goal is folding machine - computer that shall start on mains power on, shut on power off button, fold (that require acess to net) and share my files on it's hdd for eMule and in my home 12 computers network.

That it is, nothing else.

Machine is setup, so, Plug and Pray as well, as net services can be disabled - because there is no need to edit them anymore, etc.

I would welcome suggestions what MORE to optimize, tough.

Now I can manage that on one of the machines (PC chips M810L mobo):

Task Manager
41MB ram used, and that is when looking at the machine by terminal, hehe. Cool, nope? But can be the rdclip, for example, removed? Or any other services there:

Services Image

And now the main question - what could be also disabled THERE - using the Sysinternals Autoruns utility:

Autoruns items

Post edited - Please link to large images in future.
--Zxian

This post has been edited by Zxian: 24 October 2006 - 03:29 PM

[GrofLuigi]

hi trodas,

I don't know about your services (I think they're OK), but I can tell you about autoruns (I've used in on more than 100 machines - Not mine ) And this worked on every one of them - no problems whatsoever.

NvCplDaemon - not needed EVER.

Explorer.exe - usually needed for the GUI, but if it works for you, I guess it's ok. You use remote desktop.

Active Setup/Installed componens - uncheck them ALL. It's annoying to tweak something only to find out after reboot it has reverted itself. This is the ONLY purpose of this part.

Shared Task Scheduler - uncheck all. Never had any problems. Might disable Scheduled Tasks/Prefetch.

ShellExecuteHooks - uncheck. Never had any problems. I think it's some security check (but not real like antivirus or so, just something to annoy you).

Shell Extensions/approved - doesn't matter on startup. I would leave them all checked. Works only if EnforceShellExtensionSecurity is set to 1 in the registry, and that only if explorer stumbles upon one of them during runtime.

ColumnHandlers - kill'em all.

UrlSearchHooks - again something to annoy you. Restrict you. Ban you from something. You kill it instead.

Oh, here are the services. If only with these your box works as you would like, it's ok. I myself would kill DNSCache (some on the forum would be opposed), but it's better to have DNS lookups always fresh and current. The cost is VERY few bytes upon every request travel accross the network. The gain is not so negligable amount of memory.
Also check if SamSs is needed (often it isn't on plain LANs - no domain).
Protected Storage is needed only for OUTLOOK and IE passwords (not network passwords). Check if you needed.

The second part of services - drivers. I would never uncheck any of the items here. I'm amazed the box still works for you. Oh well...
If the box isn't connected to any speakers, I would uninstall that creative sh*t. In any case, try KxDrivers.

BootExecute - don't touch! It's OK.

KnownDlls - kill'em all. Gains some memory. (It is designed to save it, but since none of these dlls are all loaded together at any time on a computer... If you know which of them are loaded by your apps, leave those checked.)

Notify - I would kill em all (and I always do). No problems recorded.

Winsock - don't touch.

Print monitors - ok to leave unchecked if you don't print from that machine (and you don't since you haven't started print spooler).

Another suggestion: try TightVnc (or UltraVnc or...). If it suits your needs than you could kill that terminal server/remote desktop or whatever.

Hope this helped a bit.

GL

[caps_buster]

I must bump this interesting theme, because I tried the GrofLuigi suggestion about the service "Protected storage" and it works. Sadly only untill one choose to reboot/power off the machine. Then it wait for like 2-3min before it start actually doing something AND I do have the services timeout much tighter than that:

;stop not responding services faster
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control]
"WaitToKillServiceTimeout"="3000"

(default value is 20000)

So Windows obviously want something with this particular service on shutdown/reboot and unless we know what and where to disable this, the absolutely uneed service must still run in our computers

Any suggestions where to look?

[GrofLuigi]

You mean to say Windows waits for Protected Storage on boot? I've never seen anything like that. I consider Protected Storage to be well-behaved if set to Manual on every XP and 7 versions (service pack levels) I have tried so far. It starts when needed (when IE or Outlook is started). If they are not started, it doesn't start. Maybe it doesn't stop by itself, but I think that's irrelevant.

But maybe Windows waits for something else on boot. It's usually the network to come alive. Google for the following keywords: "synchronous group policy" "WaitForNetwork" ("Fast Logon Optimization") and check this. I admit I've seen long boot delays after tweaking, but they were solved with more tweaking . Only in one case with a laptop which had many network adapters (two wired, wireless and bluetooth) the waiting was unavoidable (I suspect the proprietary bluetooth stack).

GL