Disabling Terminal Services

[LRMHMR]

Hello all

I have posted this question elsewhere, but I come here to get more feedback

I use Vista Home Premium 32 bit OS on a desktop with Vista SP 2

My Questions are

1. Can I disable Terminal Services since I am not allowing remote help and I do not remote access my desktop?

2. If I disable this service, will it interfer with the normal funcftioning of my PC (will I still be able to get windows updates, and such things)?

let me give some background why I am looking to diable this serve Terminal Services

Few years back I required remote help from Microsoft and I think that is what enabled this Terminal Services

A little after that time, I noticed that port 3389 was in a "listening" state. I also noticed unsolicited IPs were attempting to connect to this port

I had someone from my Internet Security provider tell me I could either find the service that is listening on that port or I could just blcok the port.

At the time I did not know how to check about services aso I created a firewall rule to block the port. Since that time, my firewall logs attempts from IPs to connect to

this port, and those attempts have been block. But learning a little more about computers now, I thought I do some checking

so first I made sure that "allow remote assitance" was off

When I go MyComputer> Right Click>Properties>Remote Settings

the Box for "Allow Remote Assisntance" is NOT CHECKED

But when I run Netstat -ano I see that port 3389 is listening

Process-svchost.exe

when I checal what services are connected with this particular svchost.exe, I see the following services:

Cryptographic services

DNS client

network location awareness

KtmRm for distributed transaction coordination

telephony

and terminal services

Anyway, I think Terminal Services is causing port 3389 to remain open and thus getting the unsolicited connection attempts from various IP addresses.

I tried a little experiment and ended the Terminal Services and changed the start up status to manuel. When I ran netstat -ano again, It did not show port 3389 listening

However, when I restarted my computer Terminal Services was running again. So I ended it again but this time disabled the service. When I ran net stat -ano it showed terminal services not running. then when I restarted my computer, terminal services did no turn back on and port 3389 was not shown as listening

SO my question is, as a user of Vista who does not use remote desktop or remote desktop help,

1. CAN I Keep Terminal Services disabled?

2. Will it cause me any other functioning issues or any security issues if it remains in diabled status?

3. Will having it disabled cause me to not be able to get scheduled updates?

Thanks all

Edited September 12, 2010 by LRMHMR

[JDoors]

if I remember correctly, this article discusses what you need or can live without:

Paul Thurrott's Windows Supersite: Remove the Windows Features You Don't Need