The site offers service listing for all recent Windows operating system. Charles M. Sparks, the guy behind the Black Viper site, has recently posted an update listing all preliminary Windows 8 services. You find all current Windows 8 services in the list, their service name, the default Windows 8 Ultimate configuration setting and the recommended “safe” setting.

Why only Ultimate? Because Microsoft so far has only released that version in form of the Windows 8 Developer Preview. Users may be able to test other Windows 8 editions when the beta or release candidates come out.

Each service is linked to a Wiki entry on Black Viper’s website where additional information are provided. Here you find a service description, default path and command line options, account it is executed on and additional information.

All Windows 8 service information are preliminary in nature. Still, users who are currently running the Windows 8 Developer Preview release can use the information presented on the site to tweak their Windows 8 operating system.

If you have been using Black Viper’s site previously you may remember that the services listing included not only a Safe listing but also a Tweak and Barebones listing. Safe settings are not aggressive and should not cause troubles for the majority of users. It is the best setting to start with and it is likely that Charles will add tweak and barebones listings at a later time. For now, Safe and Default is all you can get.

It is nevertheless reassuring that Black Viper has already started to work on the Windows 8 Services listing on his site. You can check out the listing here. (via Mike)

Service Manager now is a free third party program that home users and administrators can use to manage services and drivers not only on a local PC running Windows, but also on other PCs of a computer network.

The program is offered as a portable version and installer. I personally had problems with the installer (it would simply hang until its process was killed) and no problems whatsoever with the portable version.

When you first run Service Manager you will see all Windows Services in a table. Services are listed with their name, type, start type, status, process ID, account, path, version, language and activation time among other values.

A click on a table header sorts all services this way, which can for instance be handy to display all started services or services owned by a specific company next to each other. When you enable admin tasks you can manage one or multiple services directly from within the program interface. It is then for instance possible to start, stop or restart services.

A double-click on a service opens a new window that lists all service parameters. Here it is also possible to change the service and start type, as well as user account and password the service is started from.

A filter at the top offers to hide or display active, inactive or Microsoft services. You could uncheck the MS box to hide all Microsoft services from the listing.

The second option that the program offers is to display Driver related information in a similar listing. You can either display drivers and services mixed, or only one of them. Drivers are also displayed with their name, type, start type and a handful of additional values. A double-click opens a similar detailed listing of parameters, and the links at the bottom of the interface offer the same management options like starting or stopping drivers on the system.

The third option offered by the program is to connected to a remote host to display its services and drivers in the listing.

The menu bar at the top links to several interesting features. This includes options to export the listing into a csv file, to start the Event Viewer or Task Manager, or an option to create a new system service.

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

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.

ServiWin is a Nirsoft application that aids the administrator and user in troubleshooting driver and service related issues.

The program starts up in driver list mode on startup. It is basically a list of all system drivers that are currently known to the system. This includes drivers that are loaded or stopped.

Each driver is listed with is name and display name, status, startup type, description, versions and company related information. Especially the startup type and driver version are helpful in troubleshooting driver related issues.

The toolbar at the top contains buttons to start, stop and restart a selected driver. The right-click context menu offers even more of those including changing the status to pause and the startup type.

As you can see from the screenshot there are also options to research a particular driver on Google and to create a HTML report of selected drivers or all drivers of the system.

The File > Save Selected Items menu can be used to save the selection to a text, xml or csv file.

You can switch to Services Mode, the second featured mode of the program. You do that with a click on the Services button in the toolbar, via the View menu or by pressing F8.

This list mode displays all services of the operating system along with their names, statuses and startup types. That’s handy to troubleshoot related issues, for instance the Print Spooler service when troubleshooting printer drivers.

This mode supports the very same options as the driver mode. From changing statuses and startup types over researching a driver on Windows to exporting the information to a file or a HTML report. The software supports troubleshooting remote machines. This is done by entering the IP address of a remote computer via the File > Select Computer menu.

ServiWin is a handy portable software for the Windows operating system. You can download it directly from the Nirsoft website. (via)

Third party services on the other hand are added by third party developers like Google, Apple or the company that developed the antivirus software that you have installed on the system.

These services sometimes cause problems, for instance if they are still listed under services even if the application has been long removed from the copy of Windows. Malicious software may add services as well sometimes and it may be necessary to delete them when your antivirus software is not able to.

But how can you remove services from Windows? The following guide highlights three different options; A command line tool, the Windows Registry and a third party software.

Removing Services from the command line

This is probably the most complex solution. You may need to open an elevated command prompt first, depending on the version of Windows. You can try and open the command line normally with the hotkey Windows-r, typing cmd and pressing enter. If you issue the command and get an error that you need administrative privileges you need to click on the Windows start orb, select Programs (or All Programs), then Accessories. Locate Command Prompt, right-click the item in the start menu and select Run as Administrator from the context menu. This triggers an UAC prompt under Vista and Windows 7 that needs to be accepted.

The command prompt displays Administrator: Command Prompt if the operation was successful.

Windows 7 and Vista users who have the search box enabled in the start menu can enter cmd instead in the box to open the elevated command prompt with Ctrl-Shift-Enter.

Windows Services are deleted with the command sc delete followed by the name of the service. Since it is likely that you do not know the name you need to open the Windows Services listing. This is done with the keys Windows-r, typing services.msc and enter on the keyboard.

What you need is the service name, not the display name that is shown in the main listing. The names may be identical sometimes. Double-click the service that you want to delete to see both names. Apple Mobile Device is for instance the service name and display name of the service. Microsoft on the other hand often uses short cryptic service names and longer display names. The Bitlocker Drive Encryption Service (display name) is listed with the service name BDESVC.

The name may have implications on the command. Lets say we want to delete the Apple Mobile Device service, a leftover after uninstalling iTunes. The command to do that on the command line is sc delete “Apple Mobile Device”.

Notice the quotation marks around the service’s name? A space is generally seen as a new command or parameter, which means that it is necessary to use quotation marks if names or commands make use of spaces to basically tell the program that they are all part of a word or phrase. Take a look at the screenshot below to see what happens if the command is issued without quotation marks, and then with.

To paraphrase: To delete services from the command line you need to do the following:

• Open an elevated command prompt
• Open the Windows Services management listing
• Identify the service name and not the display name by double-clicking on a service.
• Run the command, make sure you use quotation marks if the name contains spaces.
• The message [SC] DeleteService SUCCESS indicates that the service has been successfully removed from the operating system.

Deleting Services in the Windows Registry

All services are listed in the Windows Registry. If a service’s Registry key is removed, it will be deleted from the system. This method is a lot faster usually. Here is how it is done:

Use the hotkey Windows-r to open a run box, enter regedit in the box and press enter. Some users may see an UAC prompt that they need to accept.

The window displays folders on the left side, and subfolders or parameters on the right. Locate the following Registry key by following the folder structure on the left.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services

A click on services lists all available Windows Services as subfolders of that key. Please note that the service’s Service Name is used as the folder name which means that you may need to open the Services listing once again to identify the right services.

I suggest you backup the key first before you start deleting services. Left-click on the services folder and select File > Export to backup the key. Type in a file name and save it to the hard drive.

You can import the backed up key again by selecting File > Import and the file that you have previously exported.

Locate the service that you want to delete in the listing. A left-click selects the service and displays its parameters on the right pane. To remove a service press delete on the keyboard, or right-click the service and select delete from the context menu.

To paraphrase this method:

• Open the Windows Registry
• Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services
• Backup the services key
• Identify the service that you want to delete
• Left-click on that service and press delete on the keyboard

Using Third Party Software To Remove Windows Services

This method is probably the easiest from them all. All you need to do is to download the popular software Autoruns, which is freely available from Microsoft. The program is portable which means that it does not need to be installed after unpacking. Run autoruns.exe.

The program lists everything that gets started during Windows start. Locate the Services tab at the top and click it. All first and third party services are listed here by default.

You may want to filter out Microsoft services if you want to delete a third party service. Click on Options > Hide Microsoft and Windows Entries and press F5 afterwards to refresh the listing.

Locate the service that you want to delete and select it with a left-click. Press delete on the keyboard and confirm the deletion in the Windows that opens. Some Windows users may receive an access denied message. That’s when the software is not run with elevated privileges. Just select Run as Administrator to restart Autoruns with administrative privileges and accept the UAC prompt if it is displayed.

Perform the removal operation again, this time it should work. The entry is removed from the services listing immediately on success.

To summarize this method:

• Download the free software Autoruns from Microsoft
• Switch to the services tabs
• Locate the service you want to delete
• Left-click the service, press delete and confirm the deletion

Closing Words

This three methods should be enough to delete services in the Windows operating system. Autoruns is without doubt the most comfortable solution, the other two methods are on the other hand “built-in” which has its advantages as well.

It sometimes may be more efficient to stop and disable the Service instead of deleting it. This can be done best via the services.msc listing.

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)

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.

WinServices is a free software program for the Windows operating system that provides better options to manage Windows services. The software displays a list of services with their description and state upon startup. This view mode can be altered by clicking on the icon in the program’s status bar or from the view menu.

The additional view modes are by service type, load order and dependencies which can provide better information in certain situations.

Another interesting option of WinServices is the ability to edit service information including names or descriptions. Improper use of this feature can lead to problems. The ability to create services snapshots can be beneficial in this regard to restore a services configuration at anytime in the future.

The Windows services are stored in the rpt format which can be imported at a later time. This could be interesting for people who maintain multiple computer systems to configure the services on one system, export that configuration and import it in the other systems to work with the same configuration on all systems.

WinServices will notify the user when services are modified while it is running.

This feature compares services every minute by default and uses basic comparison parameters to do so. The interval of the checks and the depth can be configured in the program’s options.

The extensive options contain additional options that include notifications when services change on the system and custom actions for specific services like keeping a service always running or stopped.

WinServices uses roughly 20 Megabytes of computer memory while running in the background. It is an ideal tool for users who want better control over their Windows services. Especially the option to backup and restore a services configuration and the ability to monitor services can be really helpful in some usage scenarios.

The software program can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with Windows NT based operating systems including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

That is where Turbo Service Manager 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

Update: I have published a new review of the program in 2011. You find the updated review by following this link: Turbo Service Manager, Manage Windows Services More Effectively

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.

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.

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.