XP services and internet protection

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ernest Sparks
  • Start date Start date
E

Ernest Sparks

One of the oft-recommended things to do to protect
against internet invasion and infection (e.g. Blaster
worm) is to "turn off all unused services".
How can an ordinary person on a Home version Windows XP
decide what to turn off or disable?
The display at start > Control Panel > Performance and
Maintenance > Administrative Tools > Services does not
show service invocation hit counts.
How can the ordinary person decide rationally which
services to turn off and which to leave on without
special knowledge? The names and descriptions of serv
ices are written in "technish" and their significance is
obscure.
 
Greetings --

You raise an excellent point, one generally over-looked by those
same people who blithely recommend disabling services. People who
recommend that disabling services, without providing detailed,
step-by-step instructions _and_ fully explaining all of the possible
consequences - such as an unbootable PC- are *not* doing the average
home PC user a favor.

The average home user can't know what services are essential, and
which one aren't. This knowledge is obtained via years of experience
or extensive research. Therefore, the average home user should *not*
"tinker with" an operating systems services, until he's invested
considerable time and effort into learning how his PC and software
work.

As my venerable grandfather once said, and as I've learned through
painful personal experience, "If you don't know what it does, don't
f*** with it!"


Bruce Chambers

--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. -- RAH
 
Back
Top