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