Manual vs Disabled Services?

Supa

Member
What is the difference? I ask because it seems safer to put services on manual instead of disabling them. Is there an advantage to outright disabling them?
 
Windows Services have the following startup types:
  • Automatic: The service starts at system startup.
  • Automatic (Delayed): The service starts a short while after the system has finished starting up.
  • Manual: The service starts only when explicitly summoned.
  • Disabled: The service is disabled. It will not run.
Manual isn't the same as Disabled. Manual means a service doesn't start by default, but will run when called by another program.
If your goal is to deny a service from working, Disabled is the right choice.
 
Some services don't start by default, because they're not widely used.
For example: Parental Controls. Do I really want Parental Controls running all day, along with 50 other idle services?

Automatic services are required all the time by Windows. Automatic (Delayed) means waiting a few minutes after boot, to make starting up the system appear less slow than starting everything at boot time. This leaves the on-demand services (Manual) to run when needed.
 
Some services don't start by default, because they're not widely used.
For example: Parental Controls. Do I really want Parental Controls running all day, along with 50 other idle services?

Automatic services are required all the time by Windows. Automatic (Delayed) means waiting a few minutes after boot, to make starting up the system appear less slow than starting everything at boot time. This leaves the on-demand services (Manual) to run when needed.
Also some services that always need to be started right at boot and stuck on manual can cause issues at least in my experience. Hellbovine had a list of what he considered okay for his needs somewhere on this forum.
 
Services loaded at boot time are linked to device drivers or virtual devices (like a logical volume). They're similar to Automatic, except a driver starts them instead of svchost.exe. You can find these services listed in a driver's INF file.

Leave them alone, unless you want a broken system.
 
Especiallity with new laptops - don't turn off vendor services aka ASUS etc. as it often result in a freeze even it seems more bloated in tasklist.
 
I am asking this question because I wonder if placing services on manual instead of disabling them will achieve the same job if the components have been stripped down. This seems important to me because disabling a service that you later need means recreating the iso after you have figured out which service is the problem.

The only reason why I can see for disabling services is that windows starts services that it doesn't need.
 
Removing a component will automatically remove the component's services. Disabling a service is the soft method of testing whether a removal will have any impact to the system. Since you can always switch the startup mode back to normal.

Restoring a removed component requires using host refresh, or image re-install (if you don't have NTLite licensed).
 
The only reason why I can see for disabling services is that windows starts services that it doesn't need.
It starts services that You dont need, the trick william potter is finding out what they are. If you are using a low power device(/cannot afford to upgrade) that bogs down you might be able claw back enough to make it bearable.
 
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Removing a component will automatically remove the component's services. Disabling a service is the soft method of testing whether a removal will have any impact to the system. Since you can always switch the startup mode back to normal.
Autoruns is your friend and it can do a shedload of other stuff besides services :cool:
 
It starts services that You dont need, the trick william potter is finding out what they are. If you are using a low power device(/cannot afford to upgrade) that bogs down you might be able claw back enough to make it bearable.
Lawwwwwwwrence, or David?
 
Nuhi already figured it out - if services is kept after run "the" "preset" there are already gone.
What most people forget is all the tasks in the background.
 
Manual is typically a on demand state so not running by default, but if something that needs that services runs, it wil often get started. As an example the font cache service, I find this slows a lot of legacy apps so I disable it, but it can also speed up the main windows UI, UAC prompts, Office 365 etc.

If its in disabled state, it never starts, if its in manual state, the first time I do something that benefits from font caching (such as triggering a UAC prompt) it fires up the service.

Off topic note, Build 1809, has very little downside to disable the service in my opinion, but have observed 21H2 has some quite notable performance regressions in WDDM that increases dependency on it when the hardware isnt super fast. One reason I mentioned font cache service as an example as was tinkering with it earlier today.

So the upside of manual is things are less likely to break, as the service if its a dependency will more often than not fire up to ensure such feature works, the downside of it vs auto, is that initial fire up can add delay to whatever task is waiting for it to start and the downside of it vs disabled is you cannot ensure it never runs, in some cases you may want a service 100% off in which case you should disable it.

Thats my 5 pence on the subject.
 
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