Many people over the years have wanted to disable lots of services the Windows operating system runs in the background. Windows have since a long time tried to make the services run whenever it is required and to take as less of a memory footprint as it can.
This article is about 5 important Windows Services that you must not disable because you should leave the services that Windows comes with as they ensure that we get a smoother overall experience with our operating system.
What are Windows Services?
Services on Windows are a special kind of software which runs in the background of other apps. The services can be triggered by the launching of some specific apps or just by starting your computer. Different Windows Services are used for specific tasks like making backups of your files, updating windows or just running a process in the background which listens to a specified port on the network.
In earlier versions of Windows like the famous Windows XP, Windows services were allowed to have interactive components which ran just like normal applications which caused problems to people. However, this problem was when Windows Vista was launched and since then, Windows services are compelled to run in a Window session which is meant for running services only and so the services cannot interact with other Windows’ interactive components.
This nifty update to services has given the people one less reason to get rid of services as Windows services cannot disturb the general flow of things by showing a dialog box or send a message to the local desktop. So here is a list of 5 important Windows Services that you must not disable.
5 Windows Services that you must not disable
1. Windows Superfetch Services
Windows Superfetch is a windows service that manages the amount of RAM the hardware has and preloads the most used apps into the memory before they are actually opened. This preloading is done through an artificially intelligent algorithm. This is how Windows Superfetch is different from the older Windows Prefetch. Windows Prefetch was the predecessor of Superfetch and was included in earlier versions of Windows.
Many people think that Superfetch should be removed but that is not the case. Superfetch just has a high RAM usage at the startup of Windows but it ensures that all of the programs run smoothly afterward. If you want to have a faster startup, you can set the startup type to Automatic (delayed) in the services.msc settings. By delaying the startup, Superfetch will not start loading the applications at startup but will make sure that they load later when the disk usage is not high.
2. Windows Search Service
We all use Windows Explorer to browse through the contents of our hard disk. It has many features which can help us to navigate and work with our files and directories more efficiently. One of these features is the Windows search service. It is an important service and needs to be enabled in order for the Windows Search function to work in the Windows Explorer. It maintains an index of all the files present in your system so that it can find those files faster when you search for them from the search bar in Windows Explorer.
If you have a slow hard drive instead of an SSD and you use the Windows Search function a lot then you should have the windows search service on as by building an index of files on the computer, it will not put pressure on your slow hard drive to find the required files and the files will be found on time whenever needed.
3. DNS Client Service
DNS or Domain Name System is a record of all the IP addresses and the domain names of all the machines connected to the internet. All of the other machines that your computer connects to is managed by the DNS Client Service. The DNS Client service registers your computer’s name on the DNS. It also makes a cache of all the domain names and IP addresses on your computer. This makes doing network related tasks faster as the computer would not have to look for the specific IP address for a single domain more than once as a cache is maintained locally.
The DNS Client service should not be disabled as if we disable the service then the DNS name queries that your computer performs will not be cached and the network related tasks will become slower.
4. Background Intelligent Transfer Service
Background Intelligent Transfer Service which is commonly abbreviated as BITS is a Windows service which was introduced back in Windows XP and is still present in Windows 10. Its job is to transfer important Windows files like Windows Update files through the internet when the network is not being used by any foreground applications.
The Background Intelligent Transfer Service should not be disabled because it is used to download important updates for Windows. Keeping Windows Updated is important because Microsoft supplies security patches to the Windows operating systems with the updates to keep your computer safe from harmful viruses and ransomware. The best thing is that the Background Intelligent Transfer Service downloads the files when the network is not in use so it does not need to be disabled.
5. IP Helper Service
IP helper service is a service which is present on Windows operating systems which helps the networking tasks on a computer. It helps windows applications to know the networking configuration of the computer on the network. Windows Applications can use the IP Helper service to modify certain network configurations. It also informs the applications when some specific parts of the network configuration change.
All in all, the IP Helper service enables support for IPv6 networking on a connection that supports the older IPv6 connections. IPv6 is the updated version of IPv4 and it has many advantages other the previous version. Disabling this service will cause some applications to function incorrectly.
Conclusion
These were some of the Windows Services that you must not disable. Services are an important part of Windows and that is why Microsoft has provided services for Windows. They perform some necessary tasks in the background without affecting the foreground applications much. The services mentioned in the article should not be disabled if you want your Windows to run smoothly without any problems.
