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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

In case you are asking, this link points to the RSS News Feed that I created for the Nirsoft website.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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