An online article that’s making the rounds right now is Aalaap Ghag’s “Guide to Useless Services”, which purports to be a list of the services running under Windows XP that exist only to slow you down (and thus can be shut off without a problem). After giving it a read, though, it seems that Mr. Ghag doesn’t have the slightest clue about the subject, and I’d honestly hate to be in the position of supporting any computer that has the misfortune of having his advice applied to it. Let’s demonstrate with a few examples.

His first entry, for the Computer Browser service, reads as follows: “Contrary to what it may sound like, disabling this service still allows you to browse a network in your office. And of course, you don’t need this at home. Disable it.” Alas, if you (like many homes these days) have more than one computer and expect to be able to share files or printers across them, then you’re screwing yourself; the Browser service is what allows you to use your Network Neighborhood by maintaining the master list of shareable resources on a network and letting computers find those resources. In fact, when he says “disabling this service still allows you to browse a network in your office,” this is only because another computer somewhere in the office is successfully running the Browser service.

Now, onto the Error Reporting Service, which Mr. Ghag addresses as such: “I.e. ‘Send system information to Microsoft.’ No thanks. Disable it.” Sure, that’s a great idea, if you want to cut off your nose to spite your face. When an application crashes under Windows, the ERS allows your computer to send information about the crash back to Microsoft, both to collect data about what caused it and to see if there’s a fix for it. (For example, if a display driver causes a crash, and the manufacturer has released a version that specifically fixes the bug, then you’ll get a link to download the new driver.) This has helped me immensely on more than one occasion, and in any event, if you’ve ever bitched about MS having buggy software, then you shouldn’t turn around and cut off one avenue the company has opened towards eradicating those bugs.

As for the Indexing Service, the advice given is: “Use AvaFind and/or Google Desktop Search instead. Just disable it - no questions asked.” Huh?!? The Indexing Service does a great job of setting your computer up for much easier file searches from right there within the operating system; saying that people should shut it off and use third-party apps doesn’t make any sense to me.

Finally, the kicker is this gem about the System Restore Service: “I prefer trying to manually troubleshoot and fix, or reinstalling Windows in case of a fatal problem. I’ve never felt comfortable with using System Restore to ‘restore old versions of files’ and all that, so I keep it disabled. It frees up memory and a good amount of disk space as well.” Literally, this is like saying, “When I have a flat tire, I prefer to lift my car off the roadway with a series of rocks found in the bushes, and then fashion a new tire by felling a nearby tree and whittling it down to size. It frees up all that space in my trunk that a spare and jack would have taken up!” The System Restore Service is honestly one of the best ways to back out of a system change that’s left you totally horked, and in my experience, the only good that can come out of disabling it is that you’ll become a lot more familiar with the whole system reinstallation process.

I guess my perspective is that if you know enough about how each of these services works, sure, there are probably a million scenarios for where shutting a handful of them off might serve a given user well. But don’t mistake this article for adequate information about any of them, and certainly don’t follow its advice unless you either know what you’re doing or don’t care if your computer becomes significantly less functional.