If you look at your Windows Task Manager Processes tab, you will probably see several copies of ’svchost.exe’ running. This is normal and is the process name that your background services run as. If you ever are curious what each one is actually ‘hosting’, here is an easy way to find out.

1. Download and run Process Explorer.
2. Double-click on a svchost.exe entry.
3. Look at the Services tab.
4. You should see a list of the respective service names under the ‘Display Name’ column. Click on the entry for more information.

This is a really handy feature to know not only for informational purposes, but for troubleshooting as well. If a certain instance of svchost.exe is eating up a bunch of memory, now you know how to find out what it is doing.

Blogging is something that’s attractive to many because it allows you to express thoughts journal-style with little hassle (if any). However there are many different blog services to choose from.

Which should you go with? That’s up to you. Let’s see what’s out there.

Blogger

This is a Google-owned system. It’s relatively speedy in operation and has a nice template system. It’s also easy to point over a domain, should you have one.

LiveJournal

Not the most user-friendly in the world but has a staggering amount of active users. Note that I said active. LJ, as it’s commonly abbreviated, does have big-big communities within.

MySpace

Love or hate MySpace, their blog system is one of the best out there due to the fact it’s so stupidly easy to use. Every MySpace account has the ability to post blogs.

Open Diary

I have not personally used this system but it does have tenure (it’s been around since 1998!)

TypePad

This site holds the distinction as being one of the few paid blogging platforms that many have come to know and trust. Yes, it does cost you, but the users of the system say it’s totally worth it.

Windows Live Spaces

If you have a Hotmail, Live or MSN account you can activate this right now to try it out. It’s fairly simple to use but the big knock against it is the unnecessarily long address names, like YourBlog.spaces.live.com. There is no need to have your blog address be that lengthy.

WordPress.com

WordPress is very popular and for good reason – it’s an awesome publishing platform. When using it, it looks and feels like a word processing app – and that’s not a bad thing. Like Blogger it’s also relatively easy to point a domain to your WordPress blog.

Xanga

This site also has tenure and introduced it’s blogging service in 2000 (the site existed before that but blogging was added in at that time). This site has both free and paid options but most opt for the freebie. In addition, compared to other blogs the Xanga platform allows for the most custom ability. You can even use JavaScript!

Vox

This is owned by the same people who own TypePad – save for Vox accounts are free on signup. The best part about Vox is the super-short address you get, i.e. YourBlog.vox.com. For some this is important. Since it’s by the same people who do TypePad, the system is rock-solid.

There are other choices!

You can get a full (as far as I know) list of blog hosting services here.

Have you used any of the above blogging services? What did you think? Good or bad?

There is a lot of information available out there on what certain Windows services do and whether or not they can be safely disabled. For an excellent and actively updated guide for services in each of the current Windows releases, check out these guides on BlackViper’s web site:

• Windows Vista SP1
• Windows XP SP3 – 32 Bit
• Windows XP SP2 – 64 Bit
• Windows 2000 SP4

While there are many other sites out there which offer the same information, I have found these guides to be the most concise and helpful.

One word of advice regarding tweaking services: while a few are hogs (i.e. the indexing service), most services do not consume a noticeable amount of system resources so disabling them wouldn’t really give you much benefit. If you are unsure if you need it, just leave it on.

If you run an older computer  there are certain services you can safely disable in Windows XP. This won’t make your computer blazingly faster by any means but it will gain you a "few extra horsepower", so to speak.

To access your running services:

1. Go to Control Panel.
2. Double-click the Administrative Tools icon.
3. Double-click the Services icon.

This will bring up a list of all the services in your Windows XP installation.

It should look similar to this:

To disable a service…

Double-click the one you want, click Stop then choose the Startup Type to be Disabled so it will not start again.

Remember: You can re-enable any service by doing the exact reverse.

Error Reporting Service

I have never found a solid reason to keep this service running. Any error report I’ve ever received has not served to assist me whatsoever. So I disable this.

Help and Support

Do you ever use the built-in Windows XP Help and Support section? I don’t.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Remote Assistance will not work if this service is disabled. But if you never use RA you can disable it safely.

Indexing Service

The description of this service is "Indexes contents and properties of files on local and remote computers; provides rapid access to files".

What I’ve found is that this does nothing but slow down XP. If you’ve ever found that your hard drive seems to "think about stuff" for no reason whatsoever even when your computer is doing (seemingly) nothing, this is why.

In a networking environment this would be bad to disable (as it would make access slower). But if you’re just using one computer it’s 100% okay to disable this.

Themes Service

This is the service that gives XP its themed look, called "Luna". If you disable this service your XP will look almost identical to Windows 2000.

Of all the services you can disable, this will speed up Windows XP the most. Without the graphic overhead, screen draws and redraws occur much faster.

Important note: Some applications (albeit few) assume that you have Luna enabled. Without it running these apps may not look correct. But this does not happen often.