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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Monitored Windows processes get killed at the moment after they are started instead of being blocked outright so that even a start is not possible anymore. A few small scripts can slip through at the moment because of this behavior as it takes some time to recognize a newly launched application and send the kill command to the computer system.

Process Blocker uses a simple text file that is placed in the same installation directory as the main application. This text file contains names of executables that are not allowed to be launched on a computer system. The program itself is added as a Windows Service to the system which has to be restarted after making changes to the text file.

Process Blocker will display a user notification in the Windows System Tray whenever a process has been blocked by the service. A similar application that provides a better user experience is the process manager Process Lasso. The developers of Process Blocker on the other hand are not even halfway through their roadmap. The next step will move the management of processes from the text file to a Group Policy administrative template. Other planned features are killing processes and applications using its crc (in case they get renamed) or full path, recording process errors and information in Windows Event log, allowing users to only run applications from specified folders (e.g. program files and Windows) and changing process killing to process execution prevention.

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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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Several important locations will be scanned in the process including running programs, browser plugins, winlogon notifications, browser helper objects, Internet Explorer toolbars or Windows Services. FreeFixer does not rate the findings which means that it is up to the user to perform further research to find out if they are dangerous or not. The software makes however use of a whitelist to remove system processes, services and other official files from the list of results to narrow down the result list to potentially dangerous ones.

Each item will be listed with its name and location, other relvant values depending on the type of item and options to lookup information about it on the Internet and to delete it.

Results can be saved in a log file for further processing. Selected items can be fixed (that means deleted) by clicking on the Fix button in the software. It is usually a good idea to perform a search on the Internet before deleting any files from the list. Some can be excluded just by looking at their names while some do not give the slightest hint at what they are.

Freefixer makes use of a database that is located on the developers website which contains additional information about each item. One interesting aspect of the database is that it will display user actions by displaying a pie chart detailing how many users kept and removed the item from their computer system.

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The test won’t take longer than a few seconds and a page with results will be displayed in the end. The services optimizer will display its findings and suggest possible fixes for problems that have been found. The diagnostic results can be saved and exported to various formats and there are also links to the automatic and manual TuneUp parts of the software.

Similar questions have to be answered before starting the automatic tuneup process. A few new options are added including the one to choose between standard and maximum service optimization. The optimization ends with the click on the Apply Changes button. The program requires a restart of the computer after applying the changes.

The differences between automatic and manual tweaking of the Windows Vista Services are the options that are presented to the user. The manual tuneup provides access to four tabs and dozens of options to check. The tabs divide the process in performance, network, security and tuneup entries.

Another option is the creation of so called service profiles which can be used to run optimized profiles in certain situations. Cautious users will be delighted to note that it is possible to restore a previous state without difficulties from within the software program.

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That is where Turbo Service Manager (via Download Squad) comes into play. The software program feels like a portable advanced version of services.msc. Like its official counterpart Turbo Service Manager displays all Windows services in its main window. The name, description, state and startup type are listed plus the dependencies which is the first major difference to the Microsoft tool.

Dependencies are other services that either depend on the selected service or services that are required to run before the selected service can be started. Father and child processes so to speak. It is possible to sort all services by every listed parameter.

Working with Turbo Services Manager is easier because it provides keyboard shortcuts for most possible actions. It is possible to start, stop, resume, uninstall and pause services with keyboard shortcuts. The same is true for changing the startup type of a service. One interesting feature is the option to select multiple services at once and apply an action to all of them at once. Something that is not possible when working with services.msc.

Turbo Service Manager can select all services that depend on or are required for the selected service to run. More interesting than that option is the ability to save and load a Windows services configuration. Test Load displays the changes that would have been made to the services configuration if the configuration would have been loaded.

TSM is a small portable application that runs fine on 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Vista

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It does not seem to provide any additional information that a user could not get out of Process Explorer but it provides the advantage that it is not overladen with additional features and other services. The software program scans all svchost processes that are currently running on the system and displays them in a tree view that can be expanded to show additional information and the services that are run under each svchost entry.

This has caused lots of confusion by users in the past who wondered why several svchost.exe processes were running in the Windows Task Manager.

The services under each svchost process are listed in the left pane, a click opens detailed information about each service in the right larger pane of the application.

It details the amount of computer memory a svchost process is using currently as well as a description and program path to the services it has spawned.

The svchost viewer application is portable and should run under Windows XP and Windows Vista. The Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 or higher is required to run it. The application itself takes up only 40 Kilobyte on the hard drive.

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The PC Software, which comes in a 32-bit, 64-bit and Source Code edition for Windows XP, provides an easy to use interface to create Service Profiles. Let me explain where that could be useful: You might want to use a “fast” configuration to maximize system resources for an application, you also might want to create on profile to download and install updates from Microsoft and probably a third that uses all the services that you need in your daily routine.

The PC software asks you to create a backup of the current state which I would highly recommend. The main program interface displays the services with various information, a description pane and one that will contain the various profiles.

Each service is listed with its current state, start type, display name, description and a check box that can be used to change the active state and startup type for the selected service by right-clicking it. All the other services will be taken from the default profile and remain as is unless you change them as well.

The “play” button will activate a selected Services profile. The application developer has included sample profiles taken from Black Viper’s service configuration website which can be applied to the application as well.

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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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