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My PC is installed with softwares like Visual Studio 2010, SQL Server 2008 etc. I need these softwares very rarely, for example once in a month.

How can I improve my PC performance by stopping unwanted service, because some components of SQL is designed to run always.

I cannot uninstall and the re-install these softwares because it is very time consuming. How can I stop all services related with this kind of softwares

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disable windows service may be occur many problem. for example superuser.com/questions/416712/… –  MajidTaheri May 17 '12 at 10:23

2 Answers 2

There's no need. Services that aren't being used only affect system startup, and most of these services start on demand anyway. Basically, there's nothing you need to do. The services are already designed not to impact performance when they aren't being used.

You'll notice that the people who claim that disabling unnecessary services improves system performance never provide benchmarks to backup their claims. There's a reason for that.

If someone tries to talk you into disabling a bunch of other services, ask them what you stand to gain. I’ll bet they can’t tell you. - Ed Bott

This is an example of people repeating incantations that worked for others in the distance past without understanding why it was needed and therefore when it isn't needed. It's cargo cult IT.

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So you say, installing lot and more softwares will not affect the performance. Right ? –  Rauf May 17 '12 at 10:01
That's debatable - I have sqlservr.exe using about 140MB Memory (Private Working Set)... and I've never used (nor even opened) SQL Server. If he is running short on memory, closing this could help. –  Bob May 17 '12 at 10:01
@Bob: That doesn't affect performance. If that memory wasn't used by SQL server, it would be free. Only used memory has an affect on performance. As soon as that physical memory is needed, it will be taken from SQL server. (If you were running short on memory, those pages wouldn't be resident.) –  David Schwartz May 17 '12 at 10:02
@DavidSchwartz Free (unallocated) memory would be used for the disk cache, while 'used' memory would not. Increased cache space could improve performance, though not by much unless free/cached RAM was extremely low and/or the disk is extremely slow. –  Bob May 17 '12 at 10:11
@Bob: Windows is smart enough to recognize when the system would benefit from a larger cache and will squeeze mapped pages and discardable pages. In general, if it's possible to do the right thing, the memory manage will do it. (Assuming he has Vista or later. XP was bad at that.) –  David Schwartz May 17 '12 at 10:13

I assume you use windows. Press window key to open start menu. Then search for "services". Now in the opened list look for services you don't need and turn them off. Disabling unwanted services can free up some memory space.

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Right, but that's pointless since free memory has no effect on performance. Free memory is memory the system is not using. And if the system needed the memory, it would make it free anyway. –  David Schwartz May 17 '12 at 10:04
That's not right. If the operating system is forced to free up memory it takes time to copy the evicted pages to HDD. –  Ali May 17 '12 at 10:09
In addition, having many active services slows down booting. specially heavy ones mentioned in the question. –  Ali May 17 '12 at 10:10
Your first point is irrelevant. The number of pages is fixed since the services aren't active and each one only needs to be moved once. (And typically, many of them are discardable and so don't get copied anyway.) So it's less than negligible -- microscopic. Your second point is correct. You can speed up boot time by disabling services you don't use regularly or switching them to start on demand if they support that. –  David Schwartz May 17 '12 at 10:11
You cannot discard any pages! If what you say is correct then "trashing" is not a bad thing for OS. –  Ali May 17 '12 at 10:16

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