by NickN » Tue Apr 08, 2008 10:23 am
Three issues with such software...
1. Shutting down the wrong services can make Windows run WORSE because Windows will sit there looking for a service that may have dependencies on loaded drivers or other things. That background 'loop' activity therefore removes CPU and memory resources from a running application.
2. The method that type of software uses to shut down services will not truly recover resources. The only way a service can be correctly shut down is to restrict its use at LOGON which means the service must be shut down and the system rebooted.
3. That method will never shut down the performance counters which run in the background regardless. My list provides the method and access to disabling that activity.
That software will net little or no change. Those who do see a change are typically seeing the result of being lucky in shutting down startup items on a slow system but the result of killing the wrong services has the opposite effect in many cases so the result in use becomes the luck of the draw and has no real consistent value.
My list posted in page 2 of the FSX sticky thread at the top of this forum outlines the services that really do you any good in removing. System Restore, Indexing are the major ones. My list also outlines the correct way to shut them all down.
Shutting down processes as in Windows boot items like Real Player, MS Messenger and other programs that do not need to be booted with Windows is the users responsibility. OEM systems like Dell, HP, etc usually come loaded with so much useless crap the system is bogged down before it ever boots FSX. That area is difficult for a typical user to understand what is required and not required to have 'startup rights' in order to function properly. Any user on WindowsXP should strive for 35 running processes or less at Windows boot... lower is better and 35 is the high limit. Vista will have more and is one of the reasons the OS is a resource killer by nature. Any system running 50+ processes at boot has a problem and needs attention in the startup registry to get rind of crap it does not need.
Many of those start programs have absolutely no need to be started with Windows and if removed will still run fine when launched manually. The problem is most users do not understand which ones or how to go about cleaning that area safely.
Shutting down a massive amount of services had value back when 512-768MB of system memory was a norm. Those days are gone and software like FSAutostart and AlacrityPC, cache and memory cleaners, are throwbacks to an era that no longer exists.
Last edited by
NickN on Tue Apr 08, 2008 10:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
) said that many of the tweaks are unwise and can potentially mess up your computer. I'd ONLY follow the tweaks in the Flight Simulator X forum stickies (ones at the top), unless you know exactly what you're doing.