XP startup/"services" load

[BonedAgain]

My girlfriend has a new gateway PC which came with XP. Geez, I thought ME was a system hog! ;-) I have gone into msconfig, and using the info at http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.htm I have greatly reduced the number of programs running in the background from 16 to ONE. I am concerned though about all the items listed under "services" in msconfig, such as "Alerter", "indexing service", "Computer browser", "Background Intelligent TransferService" etc. There are 78 items here, some of them appear to be items which on my ME machine were in the startup area, such as "Task Scheduler", and which do not appear in the startup listing on this machine. Other, like "MS Messenger" appear in both the "Services" and startup. Where can I find a definative listing like the one at the above URL for what each of these "Services" do and which I can eliminate? Any info suggestions appreciated!

Thanks,

BA

[john5211]

A couple of pages that catalouge/define the various services and offer suggestions as to wether you need them or not are here (http://www.3dspotlight.com/tweaks/winxp_services/index.shtml) and here (http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm). I used the first link when I initially installed XP to get rid of some of the services I didn't need.

John

[sea69]

as john5211 has already supplied you with BK_Vipr site (which is mandatory reading for winXP newbies!)-

I would add for your benefit the following:

winXP is built on the NT Kernal, it is not/does not perform in the same manner as older DOS shelled operating systems.

In fact, The HAL {{hardware abstraction layer}}-is why 2k/XP are so stable, hardware communicates through software using this HAL instead of directly, when something goes wrong you will usually receive an error instead of a crash, so a lot of the things you have disabled may actually be NEEDED in winXP for it to run properly.

Use the guides provided by john, especially Blk Vpr site.

;)