This internal services manager is limited in many regards. It is for instance extremely cumbersome to list a services dependencies. A service can depend on other services, which means that it can only be started if the services it depends on are started as well.

Turbo Services Manager is a free third party software that improves the manageability of services under Windows. I did review the program back in 2008, and felt that it is time for a new and updated review.

One of the core differences to the default Windows Services dialog is the display of dependencies right in the main interface.

Even better: Controls are available to select all services a service depends on, or services that depend on the service for efficient management.

Another improvement is the ability to save the state of all services. This makes it possible to work with different services configurations on the same operating system. Handy if you want those networking features during the work day but not after work when you use the computer for private things.

Service configurations are saved in XML files. The services manager can load them right away, or use a test load which displays the changes that will be applied if the configuration is loaded.

Controls are also available in the icon bar to change a services state and startup. Even better, changing states and startup preferences can be done via keyboard shortcuts to speed up the process further.

The program offers additional features, like the ability to display Kernel services. The developer has updated the program recently to support the new Windows 7 operating system.

Turbo Services Manager is a handy program that is more effective than the default Windows Services management program. The program could use additional features, for instance integration of BlackViper’s services recommendations for the operating system (like the Windows Services Optimizer SMART).

Windows users can download the Turbo Services Manager from the developer website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Kaspersky removed the virus diligently enough, but it had left her with an annoying and recurring Windows Defender 0X80070006 error code whenever she started her PC.  This code, if you do a quick search on Google is “Application failed to initialise” though it was clear to me straight away what had happened and it’s so common I thought I’d write it up here.

Windows Defender has been a staple component of Windows since the famous XP Service pack 2 that introduced it.  It’s a basic anti malware app that runs automatically in the background on your PC and helps keep it free of nasties.  It’s no substitute for a commercial anti-malware app though, MalwareBytes being my all-time favourite, and as such many third-party anti-virus programs disable it when you install them.  Kaspersky is no exception to this but on this occasion, as also happens so many times, something went wrong and Windows Defender wasn’t disabled, or wasn’t disabled correctly.

This is a simple-enough problem to fix and can be done in just a few simple steps.  I thought I’d talk you through those steps here.

The first thing to do is to open the Servicespanel in Windows.  While Windows Defender is to all intents and purposes a program, it’s not installed as a normal program.  Instead it runs as a Windows service, much in the same way your print spooler or your firewall does.

The best way to find services is just to type the word services into the search box in the Start Menu.  You’ll see in figure 1 that the services panel has an icon that’s a couple of cogs, a large one and a small one (it’s highlighted here).  Click on this option to open the services panel.

Fig 1

When the services panel opens you’ll see a very long list of a great many Windows services as in Figure 2, they’ll by default all be listed in alphabetical order.  Scroll down the list until you find Windows Defender.

Once you have Windows Defender visible in the services panel, right-click on it and select Properties from the context menu that appears.

Fig 2

After you’ve selected the properties for Windows Defender, a small dialog window will appear showing all the options for that service.  You can see this in Figure 3.  In the centre of this window is an option to select the service’s Startup Type.  This is the option you’ll want to change as, most likely, your new anti-virus software has failed to disable Windows Defender and its service is still running.

Just changing this Startup Type behaviour to Disabled and pressing the OK button in the window is enough to fix the problem.  You can now close the services window and restart your PC.  Now you won’t get the error any more as Windows Defender will no longer be running and there won’t be any conflicts between it and your new anti-virus software.

Fig 3

It can be verytempting to look down the list in the Services panel to see what else you may or may not need.  By default Windows 7 is very good at only running services that are actually required.  You may find that the Tablet PC Input Service is running, and if you don’t have a touch-enabled computer you can safely disable this service too.  I would alwaysadvise against shutting down any other services however.  Some are required for Windows to start and operate, and others are required by third-party software (including your anti-virus software).

You should always be extremely careful disabling Windows services unless you know exactly what they are!  Doing so could cause your computer to become unstable or even unable to start.

Refresh PC is a free program for Windows that adds a similar restoration option to current Microsoft operating systems. The freeware is not restoring the whole system like Windows 8′s feature, but only select parts of it.

Refresh PC offers to restore all Registry settings and system services to their default state. Say you have used Windows tweakers or manual editing of the Registry. Later you found out that the settings caused problems that you cannot seem to fix anymore. Another example would be a virus attack or other malicious code that changed system settings. And while you managed to clean the malware from your system, you do not know which Registry settings you need to change to restore the system to its previous state.

That’s where RefreshPc offers to help as it can reset those settings when you run it.

You need to install the program after you have downloaded it. The program recommends to create a System Restore point when you run it which you should create unless you are using other means of backup. Just make sure you have a backup in reach in case you need to restore your system.

The program detects your operating system and version on startup, and displays the information in the program interface.

The interface itself has only one button that will restore the settings to their factory defaults when activated.

RefreshPC restores the Registry settings and system services, and cleans the temp folders and prefetch files at the same time. There is no option to select only some of the options. When you press the button, all actions are carried out.

Refreshing the system services will restore the services to their initial values. The Registry refresh requires some explanation. The program will only reset Registry settings that ship with Windows. It will not reset keys that have been added by third party installations.

RefreshPC can be a handy tool if other means of restoration like using system restore or backups have not been successful. The program can only be used if it is possible to boot into the Windows installation, which limits its reach somewhat. An option to only select some of the refresh options in the interface would be handy as well.

The application is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system, from Windows XP to Windows 7. It can be downloaded from the developer website.

But did you know that it is also possible to delay the startup of services that you may need, but that are not required immediately on boot? Delayed startup has been introduced in Windows Vista, an different alternative has been available in previous versions of Windows. The following guide is based on Windows 7, options may vary on other operating systems.

Microsoft has configured some services to start delayed, Windows Update and Windows Font Cache Service are two configured that way.

To find out which services are delayed automatically press Windows-R, type services.msc and hit the enter key. Now click the startup type column of the window and locate services with the startup type Automatic (Delayed Start) in the table. These are the services that are delayed.

Only automatically starting services should be considered for a delayed startup, and here only those that are not needed during the system start and those that other services that are started depend on.

Look at the services that have the startup type set to automatic as they are the candidates for a delayed start. It is usually safe to change third party services from automatic to delayed start, for instance iTunes or video card related services.

It can be helpful to look at Blackviper’s Windows 7 services configuration listing to determine other candidates for delayed startup. All services that are recommended to be set to manual or disabled under Safe can usually be set to delayed startup without problems, providing that they do not have dependencies that are needed to start normally.

To change the startup type of a service right-click it in the services window and select properties.

Locate the startup type pulldown and select Automatic (Delayed Start) from the selection. This changes the startup type of the selected service. (via)

Their aim is to make Yahoo! services more personal for their 600 million users in an effort not to lose more customers to Google and Mincrosoft.  Chief Products Officer Blake Irving said in a statement this week “Yahoo in three years is a global series of web experiences across a variety of different devices that gives people what they want; the content, the folks that they care about.  There is a bunch of bringing cool back to Yahoo saying a lot of the things that you want to do on the web are here.”

New features, services and upgrades the company have announced include…

The company’s focus will be on connected devices such as smartphones, tablets and set-top boxes.  It’s a smart move for the company which has struggled in recent years to stay relevant and maintain market share.  Recent moves to use the Bing search engine on Yahoo! began recently and there has been extensive talk about takeovers by Microsoft.

It will be interesting to see how Yahoo! maintains its customer base and market share when they have slipped behind so much in recent years.  It will bea struggle but Yahoo!’s services are still some of the very best around.

The free Windows software Services Suite offers a in many aspects better solution. The program lists the services based on their state. Services are sorted in the three columns automatic, manual and deactivated which aids in the identification process.

Even better is the option to change a startup state by simply dragging and dropping a service into another column. No more right-clicking or double-clicking to perform that operation.

services suite

A right-click on a service offers options to open its Registry key, and to start or stop it. This is however only possible of the service is set to manual or automatic. Deactivated services cannot be started, unless their state is changed to manual or automatic first.

One interesting feature of Services Suite is the option to import and export XML configurations. It is for instance possible to configure a system properly and export the services configuration in the end to apply it to another Windows system, or keep it as a backup copy for future use.

The developer has added two XML configuration files to the software which can be used to optimize the system based on BlackViper’s services optimization tips. One XML file is optimized for XP operating systems and one for Windows 7. Both are optimized without WLAN support.

The portable program requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0, which most Windows users should have installed these days.

The 60 Kilobyte tool is available for download at the developer’s German website. The software itself is available in English and German.

It is recommended to create a system restore point before using the software, to be able to restore the system if changes have been made that make the system unstable or unbootable. (via Webdomination)

Services Suite is an excellent program, both for users who like a better overview when configuring services on one system, and for users who have to make changes to multiple systems. The only negative aspect of the program is that no service descriptions are offered in the program interface.

The main purpose of the software is to provide users the ability quickly apply one of the suggested services settings taking the burden of performing the optimization manually from the user.

The program will display a list of all Windows 7 services upon execution. This list contains services names, system names, the status and startup type. It is possible to alter the states manually in the listing by right-clicking on a service. A left-click on a service will display a description of that service in the lower area of the program.

While it is possible to change the services manually it is not the main purpose of the program. The main purpose is to select one of the four available pre-configured services settings. These settings are default settings, safe settings, tweaked settings and advanced (barebones) settings.

All of those settings except the default settings are directly linked to one of the suggested BlackViper services configuration.

Users who are thinking about switching to one of the suggested services configuration should take a look at the services page before they start switching to them as to make sure that no service will be deactivated that might be needed to operate the system or the computer’s devices.

SMART can be downloaded from The Windows Club website. It is a portable software compatible with the Windows 7 operating system.

The Windows Services Manager has been created to offer these users a tool to quickly manage services from the computer desktop. The program places an icon in the system tray that can be used to quickly open a window displaying all Windows services.

It takes one click to start or stop a service in Windows. Even better is the option to add services to the favorites. Favorites are services that can be accessed directly after right-clicking the system tray icon. A left-click on a favorite service will either start or stop that Windows service depending on its initial stage.

The Windows Services Manager requires the Microsoft .net Framework (not sure which version though) and a computer system running the Windows operating system. It can be directly downloaded from the projects homepage over at Codeplex. The software worked fine on a Windows XP SP3 test system.

The developer of the software has plans to add additional functionality to the 1.0 final release of the software. It would for example be nice to be able to sort the services mimicking the sorting possibilities in the original services manager.

Administrators can remove services from Windows operating systems using the following means:

1. Command Line

The basic command to delete a service is sc delete followed by the short name of the service. The short name is not the name that is shown in the Services main menu. Administrators need to right-click the service, select properties and use the ServiceName in the general tab instead.

The command to remove the PC Tools Auxiliary Service would be therefor sc delete sdAuxService.

Windows 7 and Windows Vista users need to run the command from an elevated command prompt.

2. Software

Autoruns by Sysinternals can be used to remove most third party services from the Windows operating system. It does however not necessarily list all services. Users need to fallback to the manual service removal procedure if that is the case. Switching to the Services tab in the application will list the services that are recognized by Autoruns.

Selecting a service in that list and pressing delete will remove it from the Services menu.

This can be done manually. If you have installed a lot of Windows operating systems you know the process in and out. If you are a new inexperienced user you might want to use a software for that task. A good and reliable program for that task that is compatible with both Windows 2000 and Windows XP is Configure NT.

Configure NT is a a batch script that can be used to secure Windows services easily. It comes with several switches depending on the configuration of the current operating system. The program will prompt for user input after installation, the available choices are:

• (1) LAN This switch tries closing all open Ports. Some services (“automatic updates”, “scheduler”) and SMB will remain unchanged. Use this option if you still need network drives or -printer.
• (2) Standard Other than (1), SMB will be deactivated. On W2K-systems all ports are being closed. On WinXP you must disable the scheduler to close all ports. Some services (“automatic updates”, “scheduler”) will remain unchanged.
• (3) ALL Does make all changes as recommended on www.ntsvcfg.de. So all services + SMB are being disabled. (this option is recommended to “harden” your workstation)
• (4) Restore Restore the last changes made. A warning message might appear during writing to the registry. Please ignore this message by clicking OK.

Option 1 is probably the option that most users should start with to secure their Windows Services. The website contains additional information and a checklist to verify that the system has been secured. Advanced users will probably still use the manual approach as they have more control over the Windows Services configuration.

The New UI

I’m a little undecided on the new look for the Windows Live suite.

On one hand I don’t like to critique design changes until I’ve had a real chance to play around, get used to it and determine whether or not it is actually for the better. The Wave 3 UI however isn’t dramatically different from the Wave 2 ‘aero’ theme however it’s now much lighter and a bit sleeker, it also removes all icons from the toolbar which is what I don’t like at all.

What I don’t like about the new theme is that it brings with it a whole new load of UI inconsistencies between applications and services, something I hope successive releases would work on improving, not accentuating. Now the Live services contain a range of themes ranging from the original ‘Flair’ UI through to the new Wave 3 UI which itself contains two different themes – the new Live Messenger UI and the rest of the applications.

So my conclusion is the new UI is nice, but unnecessary and brings perhaps more annoyances then benefits.

The Live Suite Applications

As far as the applications and new features go this is a great release. The standout of course is the calendar synchronisation across Windows Live which is something we’ve been missing for years now.

Yes it’s a beta release so there are bugs. The customisation button for changing colours isn’t working very well right now, Writer has the occasional problem with refreshing blog themes, Windows Live Photo Gallery spikes the CPU when scanning for photos or detecting faces and also sometimes fails to fully shut down the process when closing the program. The ‘unread’ counts in Live Mail are also pretty buggy as I’m sure you’ll notice and experience when using the application.

Aside from those minor issues which are expected in a beta release, the applications are actually considerably faster and more responsive – particularly Live Photo Gallery which I was most impressed with.

Windows Live MovieMaker

The odd one out is the new Windows Live MovieMaker which is actually so basic as to be not even worth using, however it is worth taking a look at as obviously over the next year it will be improved upon in the same way the other live applications have.

I really don’t understand however why this application which has been rumoured for years now is so lacking… how can the biggest software company in the world take so long to create something like this? I hate to go on so much about it considering it is a beta release, but seriously Windows MovieMaker was basic to begin with, Vista barely improved it and now for Windows 7 we are essentially going to get exactly the same product but this time as a downloadable app rather then bundled.

So Moviemaker is at the same place it was at 10 years ago?

The service that I’m using to create custom RSS News Feeds is called Dapper. Dapper can do much more than merely creating a RSS News Feed but that is what I want to concentrate on.

The example that I’m going to use is a RSS News Feed for software updates at Nirsoft, one of the most popular software programmers out there who is not offering an RSS News Feed. We start by loading the Dapper website.

Enter a term that is describing the project, for example Nirsoft and click on the button Create a New Dapp. You could also try a search first to see if anyone has already created what you are looking for.

Enter the URL of the Nirsoft website (http://www.nirsoft.net/) and select RSS Feed as the format. A click on Next loads a preview of the Nirsoft main homepage. If you scroll down you see the What’s new section. That’s the section that we want for our RSS Feed.

That section is only visible on the page we are on. We add that page to the basket. The basket is used for analyzing page contents. Adding additional pages helps the application to determine the contents of the pages which is only possible if a website contains pages that look similar but offer different content, for instance a Google search for two different search terms.

We only have on page that gets added to the basket. A click on Next Step and OK loads the page where we make the selection of the contents that we want to show up in our RSS News Feed. If you move the cursor around in that preview window you notice the rectangle that encloses elements on that page. This is being used to select the contents we need.

Scroll down and pick the Date in the What’s new section. A click on one date should mark all dates yellow. This shows you that the application has identified the dates correctly. You need to make sure that only the dates are marked on that page. If you scroll up you see that the main menu was also selected. A click on one entry there removes it again.

If you scroll down again you see that most dates have also been unmarked. To change that click on the second date which should again mark all dates and nothing else. You can check the Preview Selected Content section at the bottom to check if only the dates have been selected.

A click on Save Field will save those information, select Date as the name and the Date Published checkbox. We got the date but we need additional information because we also want to know what got updated. Each entry contains a link and a name of the application that got updated. That will be our second field.

Just click on the first application and notice that this time everything gets marked correctly. A click on Save Field will let us save that field again, select Name and pick Title from the checkbox.

You should see two fields in the lower right section. A click on Next Step will load a preview of the RSS Feed that we have created. If everything looks ok click on Next Step which will load the final step. You need an account at this point before you can save the newly created RSS News Feed. It’s free and seamlessly integrated in the process.

Now select a name, description and tags for your dapper and save it. A profile page will be loaded in the end that contains the link to the newly created RSS News Feed. It will be previewed on that page as well.

As I mentioned earlier Dapper can do much more. It can provide XML data which can be used in applications. It’s pretty amazing and offers lots of possibilities.

Update: I have removed the link to the created Dapper application as it has been removed from the official website.

The application sits quietly in the Windows System Tray. A right-click opens a menu that is showing the configured services that the user has added during configuration. Each of these services can be started, stopped or reset depending on its current state.

One application for this could be to enable the required services to use the Microsoft Windows Updates service. The services that appear after right-clicking the System Tray icon have to be selected at the beginning.

It’s possible to add selected services only or even all if that is desired. This would give access to all services in the System Tray. Services can also be reset to their default values which is another option offered by the program.

The basics are the same. Fnd your books, add them, share them, indicate if you want to read a book and so on. However you can add your books using inline editing. With Library things you add a book, a page is loaded, you edit, then have to go back. With Goodreads there is a sort of inline popup box allowing you to add books much quicker. I owe about 40 Terry Pratchett books, so this made my initial set up much easier.

There is also a cool book compatability test which shows you, based upon your reading of a lot of books, which books would be best for you. This, and other friendly features make this more appealing to me, while basically there is not much difference between the two. If you’ve alread set one up extensively perhaps you’re better off there, but if you are ust starting I suggest going with Goodreads.

The basic interface is something that I really like. Users can upload one or multiple files from their computer or from an url to File Dropper. There is unfortunately no transfer progress bar which makes it quite a guessing game as to how long the transfer will take before it completes.

Once the transfer is finished you will be presented with an url that is pointing to the file or files that you have uploaded. This url can be send to friends or posted on the Internet so that other users can download the files from that url.

Speaking of which, downloads were rather slow when I tested the service. The download speed never exceeded 10 Kilobyte when I tried it. Could be a temporary glitch or simply that their servers are not capable of handling such a large number of requests at the same time.

The service did get quite some coverage in the past day and is probably overrun currently. Time will tell if new servers will be added or if the service stops existing like so many others before. Another problem that I encountered was that the website lacks information on how long they keep the files on their server.

But what if you want to do it automatically ? Say you happen to transcode videos every now and then and want that process to be below normal to continue working with your computer during the process. Or you would like to assign a higher process priority to a game that you like to play and that needs all the cpu cycles that it can get.

I can tell from personal experience that there are many applications where an automatic adjustment of the process priority would come in handy.

One tool that does the job is Prio, the Priority Saver. It adds this functionality to the Windows Task Manager. The most important feature that it introduces is the ability to save priorities for processes. To do that you simply select another process priority and check the Save Priority entry in the same menu as well.

Every time the process is started it will run with the selected priority from now on. The different colors are also added by Priority Saver. Green colors are assigned to processes with a digital signature while red colored ones do not have one. Hovering the mouse over a process will display a tooltip with additional information about it.

Priority Saver adds two new tabs to the Windows Task Manager as well which are called Services and TCP / IP.

The services tab displays all services currently installed on the system. This menu makes it possible to start and stop services and change their startup mode which makes the services.msc application redundant.

The TCP/IP tab displays all incoming and outgoing network connections of the computer. Tooltips aid in determining the process that is responsible for the connection.

Process Priority is free for personal use and runs fine in Windows XP. There is no information available about other supported operating systems.

The nvsvc32.exe process was one of those that I did not recognize before and I was wondering what it was doing in there. I suspected it had something to do with my NVIDIA graphics adapter and a quick search told me it was. Nvsvc32.exe is apparently the NVIDIA Driver Helper Service which is a Windows service that is started automatically.

A way to get rid of this process would be to disable the service in Windows XP. Use the command line to start services.msc and disable the service NVIDIA Driver Helper Service. It is normally safe to disable the service but if you encounter any problems afterwards you have to activate it again.

Everything is still working properly on my system. I can use the configuration and all applications and games do work as before.

Some reports on the Internet suggested that this could indeed speed up shutdown and startup time. Some others reported problems with temperature reporting after disabling the service.

Read More:

Black Viper Strange Services

SpeedyVista is offering a similar list for Windows Vista and I suggest that anyone who likes his system clean, secure and fast is going to check the suggestions out. The list of services in Vista can still be accessed by typing services.msc in the command line.

The table of services has the following structure. It starts with the service name and an explanation of it. It then lists the status of the service in Vista Home, Vista Business and Vista Ultimate and finishes with recommendations for safe settings and tweaked ones.

All services link to additional information that list the dependencies and requirements which is a good way of checking if it is safe to disable the service. If another service that you have to use depends on the service that you want to disable you can’t do it.

The first and one of the most important steps would be to download and install the latest security fixes and services packs. I sometimes have to talk to users in my job (which is somewhat security related as well) and discover that they run Windows XP with the same settings that the pc was shipped with. No updates, outdated anti-virus definitions and the like. You do get the latest patches and fixes for your operating system at windowsupdates.

Make sure you have a valid license otherwise you will not be able to download the updates. A different way would be to use autopatcher which can be downloaded in a version that includes all the updates and fixes already.

The next step would be to turn off unnecessary services and programs that you won’t use. Why should the remote service be active if you never use it ? This reduces the chance of an attacker to get into the system. There are currently 19 services running on my system, if you never tinkered with them before you have probably double that size or even more.

Read the article about turning unnecessary services off, it explains the basics. It is a good idea to turn of the following services if you do not need them

• Telnet
• Universal Plug and Play Device Host
• IIS (not installed by default)
• Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
• Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
• Remote Registry
• Routing & Remote Access
• SSDP Discovery Service

Talking about software. It is wise to not use the default Microsoft products like Outlook Express or Internet Explorer. Those are attacked the most because most of the users use them. (besides offering great ways of attacking them) Alternatives would be Firefox or Opera for Internet Explorer and Thunderbird for Outlook Express.

You should install a anti-virus solution. I do use Antivir but others should be fine as well. The most important aspect is that you keep the definition files up to date. If the software offers automatic updates I suggest you make it update the files once a day.

Firewalls. I do not use them. Well, not a software based firewall that is. I do have a hardware firewall which is all I need. I think that firewalls give the user a false sense of security. They are highly complex and require lots of attention to secure the system. It is not enough to simply install one and click on accept / deny every time a program wants to connect to the internet.

To secure the system you have to add all the tools that should have internet access to the firewall rules with exactly the ports they need. You should close every other port that is not needed by those applications. A good freeware that displays the list of currently open ports is currports.

I think those are the most important steps. If you have more let me know them.

They offer a script which does the following automatically:

• changes start type (auto, demand,disabled) according to kssysteme.de
• stops and deactivates critical services (i.e. Distributed Transaction Coordinator, Messenger)
• deactivates DCOM and removes standard protocol bindings
• closes SMB /server message block) and consequently port 445 (only if you use switch “/std” or “/all”)
• deactivates DHCP if it is not used
• disable NetBios on all network interfaces (exception: switch “/lan” prevent it)

You have several options and may leave some enabled, just take a look at the website for the different options. I suggest you backup your settings before you start the script. The script itself has a restore mode as well which restores the last changes made.