Twelve unnecessary Vista features to disable

[Dark Atheist]

im on better meds than crack

 

[indyjones]

Bah vista ran fine on my old athlon xp with 1 gig of ram slightly faster now......

 

[X-Istence]

Vista ran like ****e on my hardware, and as such I now still run Windows XP.

That said, why waste precious resources and CPU cycles when you can disable the service and not have that extra load around? Run the CPU cooler, and have more resources available for running games, and or other hardware intensive apps.

 

[LordOfLA]

an idle task doesn't use cpu resources or cause load, so why disable it and cripple the OS?

 

[X-Istence]

an idle task doesn't use cpu resources or cause load, so why disable it and cripple the OS?

It is not always idle, otherwise why is it running in the first place? An idle thread still has memory resources that are locked, meaning that when the system starts swapping that too might have a chance of getting swapped out.

Why have it running when it is not required? When it provides almost no use?

 

[Perris Calderon]

It is not always idle, otherwise why is it running in the first place? An idle thread still has memory resources that are locked, meaning that when the system starts swapping that too might have a chance of getting swapped out.

Why have it running when it is not required? When it provides almost no use?

idle threads don't (usually) have memory that's locked, they have memory that might be claimed

usually memory goes on the standby list if it's claimed but not used within a period of time, this means it is the same thing as available, BUT if it's called by this thread it doesn't have to get the information from disc

the reason to have idle threads is IF there is a chance this program or service might be accessed, if there is no chance and you have memory pressure, of course the thread shouldn't run

however if there is memory pressure and this thread has not been accessed, memory will be released as the other threads require memory that this thread has claimed, then if there was new data that is written to the pagefile, if there is no new data the information is simply released and the memory given to whatever else is using said memory

then again, if the thread is running and memory does go under pressure, while it might be true all that memory is released, the other processes will be working with smaller working sets

so there it is, if you are under memory pressure and are pretty sure a particular thread will never be used this work session or most sessions, go ahead and turn it off

if you are not under memory pressure you're not going to do anything by turning it off but it really can't hurt if you never think you're gonna access that thread

 

[X-Istence]

So you are claiming that if I did this in pseudo code:

start program
do some stuff
allocate 100 MB of ram
sleep until someone probes me

that when the OS comes under pressure, it is going to take away parts of my 100 MB that i have allocated? No, what it is going to do is swap pieces of my memory out to disk, until my entire program is swapped out to disk. Suddenly something runs and probes me, now everything has to be swapped from disk back into working memory. Even if it is just to index one file before I go back to sleep.

Now this is all theoretical, however the point is that idle processes still waste resources. Swapping data from memory to disk is expensive, which is why you want to avoid doing it in the first place.

We can argue this all we want, I made my choice in turning off stuff I don't require, and I don't consider it crippling the OS. This is not FUD, removing processes from being started in the first place will mean that those resources are available for other things. Will it make a significant impact? Depends.

 

[Perris Calderon]

So you are claiming that if I did this in pseudo code:

start program
do some stuff
allocate 100 MB of ram
sleep until someone probes me

that when the OS comes under pressure, it is going to take away parts of my 100 MB that i have allocated? No, what it is going to do is swap pieces of my memory out to disk, until my entire program is swapped out to disk. Suddenly something runs and probes me, now everything has to be swapped from disk back into working memory. Even if it is just to index one file before I go back to sleep.

Now this is all theoretical, however the point is that idle processes still waste resources. Swapping data from memory to disk is expensive, which is why you want to avoid doing it in the first place.

We can argue this all we want, I made my choice in turning off stuff I don't require, and I don't consider it crippling the OS. This is not FUD, removing processes from being started in the first place will mean that those resources are available for other things. Will it make a significant impact? Depends.

your point is correct, except for the part of swapping out to disc being expensice, it't not

if there's an image on the network there is no expense what so ever, if there is no image then that information was already written to the pagefile...there is no expense releasing memory, none

now the rest is correct, that'sthe way it works, if it's not used currently AND memory is under pressure, THEN it's swapped out to disc which is the point, when a thread is not used and memory is under pressure that memory is used by those programs causeing the pressure.

and then if the program is accessd, that information is brought back into memory as it's needed, not the entire program, just the pages beng accessed, which of course is what you want

but this discussion was about idle threads, those that never run, not threads that "run sometimes but we don't want them to run sometimes"

x, I agreed, if you don't plan on using a particular thread it doesn't hurt to turn it off, and if you are under memory pressure you probably should turn it off

if you are not under memory pressure you are doing nothing by turning it off since the memory is released and claimed by the active threads whether this thread is running or not

two completely differant scenarios

now, you are being theorhetical and you can argue this back to me all you want but that's the way it works.

I am under memory pressure in vista all the time even with 3 gigs and certainly with two gigs so I happen to turn most stuff off also

 

[LordOfLA]

Active threads have resources, Idle threads have nothing until they become active. Therefore if you have a windows feature that is never active, nothing is lost. However if some part of windows relies on what you just disabled to operate at its best - you just crippled windows.

The only part of vista you would want to turn off is tablet pc services. The rest should not be touched.

 

[Johnny]

Vista ran like ****e on my hardware, and as such I now still run Windows XP.

That said, why waste precious resources and CPU cycles when you can disable the service and not have that extra load around? Run the CPU cooler, and have more resources available for running games, and or other hardware intensive apps.

A lot of gamers are switching to Vista Ultimate 64; mostly because XP won't support Crossfire or SLI ...