Stopping Services for better gaming

I found this little trick over at www.overclockersclub.com . It involves making a batch file that stops all the services and background tasks that aren't necessary when you are gaming. This is supposed to give you the extra memory space taken up by the services and more cpu cycles, etc. It's quite simple really, I just did it having never made a batch file before. Anyway, on to the steps:

First on how to make a batch file:

1. Go to the Run box and type command.

2. At the MS-DOS prompt type edit FileName.bat and press enter.

3. If typed properly you should now be in a blue screen within the blue screen type the following commands:

net stop "AVSync Manager"
net stop "Automatic Updates"
net stop "Computer Browser"
net stop "Cryptographic Services"
net stop "Distributed Link Tracking Client"
net stop "Help and Support"
net stop "Logical Disk Manager"
net stop "Messenger"
net stop "Print Spooler"
net stop "Protected Storage"
net stop "Server"
net stop "Shell Hardware Detection"
net stop "System Event Notification"
net stop "System Restore Service"
net stop "Task Scheduler"
net stop "TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper"
net stop "Themes"
net stop "Upload Manager"
net stop "WebClient"
net stop "Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)"
net stop "Windows Management Instrumentation"
net stop "Windows Time"
net stop "Workstation"
net stop "System Event Notification"
net stop "COM+ Event System"
net stop "Network Connections"
net stop "Network Location Awareness (NLA)"
net stop "Remote Access Auto Connection Manager"
net stop "SSDP Discovery Service"
net stop "DHCP Client"
net stop "DNS Client"

Then just save the batch file and run it when you're ready to game!!! To run it just go to the command box and type in the name of the .bat file that you gave it.

If you have a network then leave out the Network Connections and any other relavent services that you feel you might need. Note: Some of these services might be relavent to different systems so be careful and make sure to read Thomas' great article describing what each service does. It can be found here:

http://www.3dspotlight.com/tweaks/winxp_services/index.shtml

To restart the services after you've finished playing you can either restart the computer or you need to change all of the services from "net stop" to "net start" and save it as a different batch file and run it after you're finished gaming.

This little tweak should provide for a better gaming experience. I personally haven't had time to do any hardcore gaming (finals ), but when I do I plan on seeing some subtle (hopefully big ) differences in my gameplay. Hope some of you will get the same advantage that other people have by doing this! Again thanks to Matt of www.overclockersclub.com for this little guide.

For more on batch files look here: http://www.computerhope.com/batch.htm

That's actually a pretty neat idea.

Just to elaborate a bit, here is a way to turn off some of the unused background tasks:

Modify your batch file program to include these commands:

pskill ERtray
pskill EPMWOR~1
pskill dbgout
pskill usrbridg
pskill ctfmon
pskill Alogserv
pskill RuLaunch
pskill devldr32

The pskill program is very small and forces the background tasks to shut down. It can be found here:

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pskill.shtml

Sadly, it appears to have only freed up 4mb or so. I haven't really tweaked my services either.

I guess if you really need that 5mb....

I was going to add this to my tweaking program, but considered that the net gains compared to the amount of work it would need were not good enough. 4mb is nothing today, and so I don't really see the point of disabling services just to play games.

But Services don't actually use much CPU time, unless they are actually doing anything i.e. Network Services if you are using a network. And surely services aren't very unstable anyway, as the user has no interaction with them. Which bits of Windows usually crash - ANSWER: anything relating to the UI (i.e. Explorer.exe).

I don't think disabling the services would give any performance gains in anything noticable. I will try it out in 3DMark & SiSandra, but I don't think it will make any difference.

I haven't gotten around to testing it with all the services turned off, but here is my current list:

pause
net stop "Application Layer Gateway Service"
net stop "Application Management"
net stop "Background Intelligent Transfer Service"
net stop "Clipbook"
net stop "COM+ Event System"
net stop "Computer Browser"
net stop "Cryptographic Services"
net stop "DHCP Client"
net stop "DNS Client"
net stop "Distributed Transaction Coordinator"
net stop "Distributed Link Tracking Client"
net stop "Error Reporting Service"
net stop "Fast user Switching Compatibility"
net stop "Help and Support"
net stop "Indexing Service"
net stop "Logical Disk Manager"
net stop "Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service"
net stop "Internet Connection Firewall (ICF)/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)"
net stop "Messenger"
net stop "MS Software Shadow Copy Provider"
net stop "Net Logon"
net stop "NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing"
net stop "Network DDE"
net stop "Network DDE DSDM"
net stop "Network Location Awaremess (NLA)"
net stop "NVIDIA Security Support Provider"
net stop "Portable Media Serial Number"
net stop "Print Spooler"
net stop "Protected Storage"
net stop "QoS RSVP"
net stop "Remote Access Auto Connection Manager"
net stop "Remote Desktop Help Session Manager"
net stop "Remote Procedure Call (RPC)"
net stop "Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Locator"
net stop "Remote Registry"
net stop "Removable Storage"
net stop "Routing and Remote Access"
net stop "ScriptBlocking Service"
net stop "Secondary Logon"
net stop "Security Accounts Manager"
net stop "Server"
net stop "Shell Hardware Detection"
net stop "Smart Card"
net stop "Smart Card Helper"
net stop "SSDP Discovery Service"
net stop "StyleXPService"
net stop "System Restore Service"
net stop "Task Scheduler"
net stop "TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper"
net stop "Telephony"
net stop "Themes"
net stop "Telnet"
net stop "Terminal Services"
net stop "Uninterruptible Power Supply"
net stop "Upload Manager"
net stop "Volume Shadow Copy"
net stop "WebClient"
net stop "Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)"
net stop "Windows Installer"
net stop "Windows Management Instrumentation"
net stop "Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions"
net stop "Windows Time"
net stop "Workstation"
net stop "Wireless Zero Configuration"
net stop "WMDM PMSP Service"
net stop "WMI Performance Adapter"
pause
exit

I'll add some commands to kill the background tasks later, and then test to see how much memory is saved and if it affects gaming any. I'm not expecting a huge difference, but every little bit helps. Plus, by turning all the background tasks off (i.e. IE) I'll reduce the CPU cycles and chance for errors or lockups.

I love your tip, man. Great. However, nothing would compell me to type in all that stuff into a command prompt text editor when I could copy and paste from the website into notepad.exe ....!!!

(apologies if I missed someone mentioning that.... )

You would call the file FileName.txt and then just rename to FileName.bat in windows explorer (with hide file extensions for known file types option disabled in windows explorer settings... otherwise you will wind up with FileName.bat.txt or something.... )

Re: Re: Stopping Services for better gaming

That's presicely what I did!!! Sorry if I wasn't clear on that. Not all the services were on the website so I had to manually insert some. Anyway, here they are for anyone else interested in simply copying them into notepad and making a .bat file using these services. Hopefully I'll get some time next week after finals to do some testing on this.

I have to say that you new service killer is quite an improvement. This time it saved me around 15mb of memory, which I think is a noticeable gain.

As for CPU, I don't even really think about it because the amount used by services so so negligable.

That's a very good question. A lot of them are optional things (obviously! hehe) that are probably more for convenience than necessity (PnP, Indexing, SMART card. etc). But there are a few in there I've always figured were important for system functions... Apparently not.


Can I suggest a BAT file that turns these services back on? I'm gussing net start service would probably work, but it would be good to have the ability to turn these back on after you finish playing your game.

Thats what I did. I made a stop.bat and a start.bat, with notepad of course. Changed a few things, like killing Norton and a few other things. Works great.

I too made a start and stop .bat file. I haven't had the chance to make the changes to kill the background services yet, but I plan on it soon. Does anyone know the command for killing background tasks??? If not I'm sure I can find it somewhere. This is the area I think I'll notice the best difference with not having tasks like IE, Norton, etc. running while I'm gaming.

Would anyone here like me to add it to my tweaking program? The new version of your script is much improved over the last version - 4Mb was not a great gain, but 15Mb would be quite useful for memory limited users.

I think anything and everything would be wise to include. Features such as disabling the services automatically will make people all the more interested.

You should definitely add at least some of these abilities to your program. There aren't many tweak programs out there (if any) that allow the user to turn services off that I've seen. Just remember though that some users MAY have problems by doing this and really need to know what they're doing by running this. I recommend referring them to Techspot's great Guide on services.

By adding this feature it will make it easy for less hardcore users to just click a button instead of making their own batch file like us. I suggest running a few tests on some different configurations, OS's, etc. to see if there is any noticable problems first, but other than that I say go for it. I'll try and update with the background services that I'm going to turn off when I get the chance to modify it.

It will go in the next version. I will work start adding it tonight. Thanks guys.