Disabling unrequired Services in Windows 2003

I know this post is not relevant to SharePoint as such but will tell you on how you can improve the server security and performance.

There are around more than 100 services that run on a Windows 2003 Server. Some of these services might be useful and some may not be. So why not disable them rather than letting them chew your server resources. There are five basic service that you can quickly think of disabling. These are listed below:

1. ERSvc - Error Reporting Service (Used for reporting application crashes to Microsoft)

2. HidServ - Human Interface Device Access (Used for other smart devices, which you might not use on a server)

3. IsmServ - Intersite Messaging (Used for sending messages from server to server)

4. ScardSvr - Smart Card Access

5. LMHosts - TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper

Now these services are just the start. There is a list of other services that you can check, if you really need them. TechRepublic gives you such list. You can downlowd it from here.

Hope this might be helpful in some instances. Like you can disable such services on your VPC which you might be using as a development environment.