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.