Hi,
These are the differences I see between your friend's services list and the "typical" lists on my personal machines are listed below with a "+" to indicate a service I don't normally see running on a "regular" PC and a "-" for a service that I do normally see running on the same type of system.
- Application Layer Gateway Service - Service dependencies are Internet Connection Firewall / Internet Connection Service. Plug-ins for ICF and ICS won't work without this service. Don't know if disabling it has other ramifications. You should note that the built-in firewall, if the user plans to run it, is designed to work with specific interface features from third party apps.
- Automatic Updates - No service dependencies. I would think that disabling this shouldn't prevent a manual update from succeeding. However, I can tell you that turning off Automatic Updates from the System Properties dialog does NOT disable this service. You might try turning it on to see if enabling it makes a difference in the system's behavior at the Windows Update site. You can still prevent automatic updating from happening via the System Properties dialog.
+ Direct Update - I just looked on three Windows XP machines (one Home Edition, two Professional). None of them even has this service installed. The name is highly suggestive. Is its origin third party or Microsoft? The name is highly suggestive. If it's third party, I'd consider turning it off to see if disabling it has a positive effect on Windows Update.
- Error Reporting Service - I wouldn't disable this on any system, particularly if I were running third party services.
- Help and Support - I wouldn't disable this on any system, either. It happens that the Help and Support system in Windows XP is the best Microsoft has produced to date. As an added bonus it provides what I think is the most efficient interface for querying the MSKB. Try it. You'll be astonished how much faster searches at MSKB are when you use this interface. I don't bother with the online browser interface any more. Besides, if your friend needs help in getting Windows XP set up, why wouldn't he need the help files?
+ IIS Admin - Yipers! Is your friend performing admin functions on Internet Information Server on another machine? Not really for newbies. The security ramifications are immense. IIS is (IMHO) an outstanding piece of software, depsite its security flaws. But it's definitely not for the playground. Only end user PCs / workstations I would have IIS running would be Web development testing machines. Otherwise, it exists solely on servers anywhere under my sphere of influence. You have to watch out for this one because it gets installed / activated by some Microsoft software and / or some third party software. If you didn't deliberately install it, you should find out why it's there. IIS is one of the services that can really chew up resources, too, though I've never noticed any particular drain from the actual admin service.
- Indexing Service - I do sometimes run this on workstations on which I do a lot of searching for specific file contents. You don't show it enabled, and that's almost certainly the best way to have it on most end user machines. I know of an outstanding freeware third party search utility (Agent Ransack) that works very efficiently for this purpose without tying up the resources or presenting the security issues of Indexing Service.
? InteractiveLogin - I'm presuming that's Interactive Logon. That's okay, and needs to be there. I'm just curious about the spelling.
- Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) / Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) - This can't be run (AFAIK) without the Application Layer Gateway Service. So I don't know if you deliberately turned it off, or if it is off because you turned off ALGS.
+ Logical Disk Manager - Is your friend's system running dynamic disks? On standalone systems I've only seen this service running when dynamic disks were being used. It's my belief that the average end user with a standalone system will not benefit from dynamic disks. YMMV.
- Machine Debug Manager - Running on my personal machines for reasons having to do with my specific uses for them. Not a huge loss for the average end user. As a matter of fact, previous iterations of it have been a major PIA to most people. But the one in Windows XP seems to be relatively well-behaved.
- Messenger - Like the blurb in the Services applet says, this shouldn't be confused with Windows Messenger. I agree that the average user (especially on a standalone) has little use for it.
- Portable Media Serial Number - Needed only if it floats your boat.
- Print Spooler - Not needed if not printing over networks or using the Fax services.
+ Remote Access Auto Connection Manager - Matter of taste in most cases. I can't stand apps that try to connect my machines when I don't want 'em connected. I'm a control freak about this issue. So I disable this service. Assuming no malware on the system, it's entirely a matter of preference.
- System Restore Service - I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with me on this one. I don't care. I'm right.
This happens to be one of the most useful features of the OS. There are only two arguments against using it: a) It chews up resources. My answer to that is that, if the system is so limited that this service makes a serious difference in performance, the system shouldn't be running Windows XP. In every case I've seen where this service made a real difference, the real cause was serious misconfiguration of the system. I run it fully configured on a Pentium III 500 MHz notebook with a S-L-O-W hard drive. The difference in performance of the system with this service enabled / disabled is not noticeable to me as a user. I can play DVDs while surfing with no glitches in movie playback. b) Real men / women don't use System Restore Service. My answer to that is, "BS!" This sucker works. You can't make an ERD in Windows XP. How are you going to recover from a really bad driver installation? Seriously bad drivers / faux drivers are the only things I've seen that could bring this OS to its knees. And there are plenty of bad drivers out there, some of them being touted as being Windows XP compliant. Again, if your friend needs help in setting up a Windows XP system, he needs this service to be running! You might have him read about this feature since it could be very useful to him some day. It's my feeling that the only people who should turn this service off are either people who do nothing but play games on their systems or those who love pain! But it has nothing to do with your current issue, of course.
+ Windows Image Acquisition - Just curious as to why this is running. Is it set to run automatically or manually? I always have it set to manual operation.
GENERAL NOTES:
When disabling or re-enabling a service (or driver), make the changes one-at-a-time, then test the behavior of the system with that specific change in place. In order to be absolutely sure that the system configuration will reflect accurately the normal behavior of the machine with the configuration change you've just made, reboot the system. I know, I know. In Windows 2000 and Windows XP you're not supposed to have to reboot the system to get it to institute most changes. Nonetheless, if you want to cover all of the bases, including the unexpected glitches that sometimes occur between services and drivers during startup, then you'll reboot after each change you make, and THEN you'll test the system to see what effect the change had.
I imagine that you're aware that people can also have trouble getting Windows Updates for a number of reasons having nothing to do with what services are running. Corrupted files in the Temporary Internet Folders cache or WUTemp directory can cause mysterious download failures, and stringent cookie settings and security settings in the Internet Properties dialog can prevent a download from even starting. There are third party cookie handlers that can interfere materially, too.
I hope I've covered most of the more likely candidates for your troublemaker. There are undoubtedly some that I've missed. Please keep us posted with what you learn as you try to sort this out. If this information doesn't help, perhaps other suggestions will work. If you figure out something that's unrelated to an of these suggestions, I (and maybe others here) would appreciate it if you'd let us know what it was. It's always nice to learn something new -- or to remember something old that you should have remembered!
- Collin
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