Most people are familiar with the idea that unnecessary loads in the car are detrimental for fuel consumption, and affect how well it accelerates.
Most people are also familiar with how over time, people become used to the clutter, and it practically becomes invisible to them.
PC users can easily relate to this.
When you first bought your new PC, the performance was wonderful! Windows loaded up very quickly.
Double clicking an icon brought up the application quickly enough that you hardly noticed the cursor turn into an hourglass.
Now, after several months of use, the same PC feels sluggish. What has happened is that there is a lot of additional weight loading down the engine,
some of it essential, some of it unnecessary. You've added more applications, some of which run continuously in the background.
And you'll want to keep some of them there! Antivirus and Personal Firewall programs are truly worth having ?
even if they take a toll on your system performance. Just like the seatbelts and spare tyre in your car, you would not want to remove these to save on weight
and improve performance. Rather, you will want to find something that's both unnecessary and heavy for the exercise in weight reduction.
This tip suggests that if you run your computer as a personal workstation (as opposed to running it as a server),
you may want to remove a load that you are unlikely to use, one that takes up a good amount of system resources.
The load in question is the ability of your PC running Windows 2000 or Windows XP as a server,
where folders and printers are made available for access by other network users.
If you do not share out folders or printers, this tip is for you. Even if you do occasionally need to share out folders or printers,
you can follow this tip for the bulk of the time you are not sharing out, and then reverse the steps when you do need to share out.
Here are the details for this tip, in which we disable the Windows2000/XP Server Service.
Disable the Computer Browser Service
Right Click the "MY COMPUTER?icon
Select MANAGE
This opens the Computer Management window.
In the left pane, double click on "Services and Applications?
Click on Services.
You will now see a list of the available services in the right pane. For an easier view, click on the tab below that says "Standard?
You should now be looking at a window like in Fig 1 below:
Scroll down till you come to the entry for "Server?
Double click on "Server?
You will now see the following dialog box:
Warning: If you have shared out any folders or printers for other users on the network to access, performing the next step will disable access to these shared resources.
Click on the "Stop?button.
Once the service is stopped, click on the drop arrow in the "Startup Type?dialog box and select "Disabled?
Click on the "Apply?button.
Then click on the "OK?button, and close the Computer Management dialog box.
Shutting down the server service also has the side benefit of shutting down the Computer Browser service,
which is generally unnecessary unless you are running your PC as a server.
You can just as easily reverse the steps above to turn on the server service again, should the need arise.
There are many other services you can disable to free up even more resources for the applications you really need to run,
but be sure you understand what these are before you disable them. Personally, from my own experience,
disabling the server service brings about a lot of gain, with practically no inconvenience,
compared to disabling other services where the impact is less noticable.
If this tip has given you a taste for unloading unnecessary loads from your computer,
I suggest that you cast a critical eye on all the programs that load automatically, many of which appear in the system tray
(the small icons that by default, appear in the bottom left of the start bar on your screen, near the clock).
Many of them, like download managers and video utilities, are mostly unnecessary,
and you may want to look for the configuration screen that stops them from loading automatically.
If you use these rarely, it's better to manually activate them from the start menu when you need to use them.
Just two last point about disabling the Server service. There is another service that depends on the Server service, called the Computer Browser,
which is automatically disabled when the Server service is disabled. This is another unnecessary load in PCs that are not being used as servers.
You will hardly notice it's gone. Finally, there is a security benefit to disabling the server service.
Doing this effectively locks out some of the ways in which unscrupulous users who gain access to your network
(easily done in the case of unsecured wireless networks) can gain access to the information stored in your PC.
(Article Updated Date : 15-9-2004)
