What are the **absolute minimum** processes in WinXP?

DaRuSsIaMaN

DaRuSsIaMaN

Geek Comrade
Hey guys. I need to be able to disable EVERYTHING in windows XP. ALL processes that are not **absolutely** necessary. It's kinda hard to explain why I want to do this but... just trust me, I just wanna try it for something important. I think I remember in Win98 u could reduce it down to just 2 processes. Something like explore and OSA, if I remember correctly. Or maybe even just 1. I tried running msconfig and selecting the "diagnostic startup" option on the general tab. (see left thumbnail) However, when I restarted WinXP and checked the task manager, there were still quite a few processes -- like 10 of them, in fact. (see other thumbnail) Aren't some of those unnecessary? If win98 could cut it down to just 1 or 2, I would think WinXP can do the same? I need the ultimate minimum. Thanks.
 

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Hmm that's not quite what I'm looking for. I don't want a permanent modification of WinXP, which is what that site is geared towards (as far as I can tell). I just want this to be temporary. Like in Win98 I could open task manager with ctrl alt del and start shutting down processes until I was left with just 1 or 2 and Win would still work. It was very simple. But that's because I knew precisely which process(es) it was that were absolutely critical, whereas everything else could be closed. Upon reset, everything would go back to normal. So I want to do the same thing in WinXP, i just don't know which processes are the absolutely critical ones. Dealing with these services settings is more time-consuming anyway.
 
well, i would suggest you do the same on XP and google the processes, then decide what you want to end, there maybe another way to temporarly strip XP down to the bare essentials (processes wise) but i don't know it
 
Make sure not to screw with the following 3 settings:

-Automatic Updates
-Background Intelligent Transfer Service
-Event Log

When you do a Windows update, they need to be able to run. Despite what some guides say, don't turn them off. If not, WU will bark at you to enable them.
 
I know some important processes that you better don't stop in XP:

svchost.exe
winlogon.exe
explorer.exe (if you stop this process, the taskbar and desktop icons dissapear)
services.exe
spoolsv.exe
rundll32.exe

and some more that i might forgot;)
 
zeus said:
Do you mean the windows start key? It didnt work for me
Click to expand...
i may be mistaken, it's being a while since i used XP, but i think if you Ctrl-Alt-Del and end explorer you can start explorer again with <Windows Button> + <E>, try it, maybe i should stop posting on XP problems, what do you think ?
 
If you press Ctrl-Alt-Del, you will get the task manager and if you remove explorer.exe task from it then you wont be able to see your task bar and icons on your desktop...but it wont disturb the processes u r running at that time.
So u can bring up ur task manager again by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del , in case u have closed it...nd if you click in File > Run and type explorer or explorer.exe, you will get everything back.....
 
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