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How windows works

Posted on 27 Jan 2005 at 12:14

In terms of Dependencies, of the three services above, both BIT and Cryptographic services require the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service to be running. RPC is a Windows system service that could almost be regarded as the heart of the operating system given that about 70 other services rely on it being there. It enables different processes to talk to each other, is set to Automatic and should be left like that. Don't confuse it with the RPC Locator service. This is also a rather important component, but it can be left in its Manual mode.

Time for a change

The COM+ Event System service is set to Manual by default, but I would be surprised if you were to look at your running services and not find that it had already started. In standalone mode you might not care about it running, but in network mode it should be left alone. If you do decide to disable it you will be prompted to also disable the System Event Notification service.

This talks to the OS about things such as logon and power events, and it is not so important in standalone mode. However, bear in mind that it is needed if, for example, you use a Windows CE device with your system. My advice is to leave both services alone, and if you are leaving COM+ Event System alone you should leave COM+ System Application alone too.

The Computer Browser service is designed for network use. It is basically a list holder for all the systems and shared resources on a network. I therefore can see no great reason why it needs to run on a standalone system. Remember you disabled it if you do at some point connect to a network since commands such as NET VIEW and items such as My Network Places will not function properly if it is not available.

You might think that with a name like Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Client, standalone users could set this service to Disabled without pausing for thought. This might have been the case years ago, but today the DHCP Client service is used by ISPs to supply IP addresses on-the-fly as well as pass on DNS information, so unless you have a fixed IP address, leave it running.

The Distributed Link Tracking Client service is used by the Windows NT File System (NTFS) to track links to files, both on and off the local computer. It comes in handy as it maintains those links even if the source file is renamed, or moved, on both local and networked systems. You could probably get away with disabling it on a standalone system if you had a burning need to recover the RAM it uses, but I would suggest switching it back on again afterwards.

The Error Reporting service pops up the dialog asking if you would like to send an error report back to Microsoft when an application crashes. If you are on a standalone system without an Internet connection you can happily disable it, otherwise you are better off leaving it on. There are those that think it examines all aspects of your system, but I do not believe this to be correct.

Error reports are extremely useful to Microsoft because if the company starts to see a number of similar problems, it knows it needs to swiftly develop a solution. Furthermore, you will often find that after sending the report you will be redirected to a Microsoft web page that has information about the crash that could help you solve the problem.

The Fast User Switching Compatibility service is great if you have a standalone system with lots of users, such as a family PC. It lets you change users without having to shut down running applications so, unless you are about to run large games, it enables most families to co-exist quite peacefully on a single system. It runs off a Manual setting, which is fine, because if you do not have multiple users it will never activate anyway.