Black Viper's Windows Xp Services Configuration

[Chachazz]

The very well-known and trusted Black Viper's Windows XP Services Configuration Guide

(site unavailable for sometime now) is being mirrored on 2 sites:

http://kye-u.hopto.org/mirror/blackviper/

http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=12

[Matt]

The site is now back up and located at:

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

http://www.blackviper.com/

Matt

[CataclysmCow]

Where would be a proper place to discuss the complete ineptness, misinformation and flat out FUDness of BlackViper's site and suggestions on this forum?

Not in this thread I'm guessing?

Edited September 7, 2005 by CataclysmCow

[Matt]

Hi CataclysmCow,

If you'd like to start a topic concerning BV, go ahead and start a thread in PC Support.

Matt

[CataclysmCow]

So I make a post explaining that BlackViper's site is a bunch of hooey and will cause readers looking for a learning opportunity to take 10 steps back. 4 days later and my post is lost in an archive of threads and this thread still stands.

I guess I'm just suprised that a site like BestTechie is supporting a site like BlackViper.

[Matt]

So I make a post explaining that BlackViper's site is a bunch of hooey and will cause readers looking for a learning opportunity to take 10 steps back.  4 days later and my post is lost in an archive of threads and this thread still stands.

I guess I'm just suprised that a site like BestTechie is supporting a site like BlackViper.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi CataclysmCow,

If you would like to start a thread, you can state your opinions on the subject. Perhaps if you can support your claim that BV is 'hooey' this thread will be reconsidered for unpinning. I personally would like to hear your opinions. For now, I'm just going to close this thread.

Matt

[Matt]

Unpinned, CataclysmCow provided much support in his explanation. If he would like, he may post it here. Other comments should also go here.

Matt

[CataclysmCow]

Thank you for the opportunity to clean this up, Matt.

Here's what I supplied to Matt and Jeff:

BlackViper's site is constantly debunked on many respectable sites.  It's looked at as a perfect representation of all that can go wrong when you let computer myths fester.  The site is completely full of junk.  The explanations are wrong, the conclusions are wrong, there's no supportive evidence and the guy just flat out has no clue.  Following his advice can cause harm AND ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD.

Take his foremost premise - that you can increase your machine's performance by disabling services.  That's flat out false and completely ignorant.

-- An idle service uses no CPU time.  Calls to services are handled by a service manager.

-- If a service isn't idle it obviously is needed.

-- Idle services use hardly any memory, most of which can be paged to disk.

-- Disabling a service does not free up any memory as services are allocated from the non-paged pool.  Disabling a service does not gain you anything

-- There is no reputable test showing that disabling services increases performance.

-- There is an endless amount of examples showing how disabling services reduces performance.

BlackViper's site is the butt of all jokes.  None of his assumptions even take into consideration the NT kernel.  He bases all of his conclusions on the Win9x OSs even though he directly addresses the NT services.

It's a disservice to people to advertise this site and it's embarrassing to see it advertised here.

I'd love to hear any other opinions on BV's main premise or any of his other suggestions.

Edited September 7, 2005 by CataclysmCow

[JDoors]

I don't use XP so the site wouldn't be of any use to me but, I'm curious if 'disabling services' is the only advice you disagree with, more, much of, or everything on the site.

<edit> Well, I did go there to read some. Yes, it appears disabling services would be more advantageous (if it were possible) for previous versions of Windows and previous generations of computers. Doing so would leave more 'resource memory' available to Windows, of which previous versions were chronically short. It would also leave more memory available for other purposes, and previous generations of computers were chronically low on memory. Plus the slower processors and systems could benefit from less unnecessary work of any kind, making better use of their abilities.

Newer systems have eliminated the resource memory bottleneck, generally have more than enough memory, and are significantly faster, so you certainly could claim that type of 'tweak' is no longer vital. But I don't see how you can make the leap to saying it is an outrageous waste of time and that a site that promotes it deserves an Internet 'spanking.' Less resource handling by Windows, more available memory and eliminating unnecessary processor cycles will ALWAYS be a good thing. It may not be 'all that' due to technolgy advances, but it's not completely useless either. I can see that some systems may even benefit by a meaningful amount, depending on their configuration and useage patterns.

IMO.

Edited September 7, 2005 by JDoors

[blim]

Thank you, Chachazz and Matt for bringing this up and thank you Catacow for poking holes in it!!! I echo JDoors post---I know very little about Black Viper, except it's a "tweaking utility" (I'm too chicken to tweak anything) and some people swear by it and some people hate it. Now again, I'll likely never use Black Viper, but I would like to know more about it's usefulness--good and bad.

Keep up the debate

Liz

[CataclysmCow]

I don't use XP so the site wouldn't be of any use to me but, I'm curious if 'disabling services' is the only advice you disagree with, more, much of, or everything on the site.

I disagree with a lot of content on that site, but since his main argument is that disabling services is advantageous I thought I'd hit that one.

<edit> Well, I did go there to read some. Yes, it appears disabling services would be more advantageous (if it were possible) for previous versions of Windows and previous generations of computers. Doing so would leave more 'resource memory' available to Windows, of which previous versions were chronically short. It would also leave more memory available for other purposes, and previous generations of computers were chronically low on memory. Plus the slower processors and systems could benefit from less unnecessary work of any kind, making better use of their abilities.

This is the big mis-conception that he works off of. That disabling services will free up resources. This just isn't true. Even if you disabled all services you'd only free up about 1.5-2MB of memory. When a service is idle most of this memory is paged to disk anyways. Even if you were to free it up it wouldn't be accessable to applications/user-mode processes because services are allocated memory from the non-paged pool. CPU time isn't an issue either. Service calls are handled by the service manager. Idle services use absolutely no CPU time at all.

I agree that on earlier Win9x systems the virtual memory system wasn't spectacular and the OS itself wasn't to splendid either. There were a few tweaks that you could benefit from. Win NT OSs on the other hand have a beautifull VM system and are pretty damn efficient in a default state. Very few tweak sites have any credible information on tweaking Win NT OSs for better performance.

[JDoors]

From my perspective 1.5-2.0 Meg of memory is significant, and saying it is "paged to disk anyway" is another way of saying "using the much slower hard drive instead of RAM." I certainly see your point and as I stated I can see that it's probably not a big deal if you have plenty of 'headroom' on your system.

As for there being few tweaks that make much of a difference, it's not REALLY about speeding things up, is it? How many people defrag like it's a religion? Or fiddle with their folder structure until it's 'perfect?' Or for that matter arrange and rearrange their desktop for that extra millesecond gained in efficiency? We could all use our systems just fine right out of the box, but where's the fun in that?

[CataclysmCow]

From my perspective 1.5-2.0 Meg of memory is significant, and saying it is "paged to disk anyway" is another way of saying "using the much slower hard drive instead of RAM." I certainly see your point and as I stated I can see that it's probably not a big deal if you have plenty of 'headroom' on your system.

Don't give "paged to disk" a bad name - it doesn't deserve it. It's being paged to disk because it's not being used. If it's not being used it can't be slow (or fast) can it?

As for there being few tweaks that make much of a difference, it's not REALLY about speeding things up, is it? How many people defrag like it's a religion? Or fiddle with their folder structure until it's 'perfect?' Or for that matter arrange and rearrange their desktop for that extra millesecond gained in efficiency? We could all use our systems just fine right out of the box, but where's the fun in that?

I agree - completely. I futz about with my boxes all the time. I've done some really stupid things too and still have been happy with the results (trying to recreate a typical *nix folder tree on Win98 for one).

This isn't about tweaking or getting that extra smidgen of performance though. These are just downright stupid pieces of advice that accomplish nothing other than crippling your system.

I know it sounds cliche, but it's easiest to just say that "there's nothing to gain and everything to loose".

Over at AnandTech they did a testbed with BV's suggestions. Turns out that following his advice actually hurts performance (LINK). There's a few faulty assumptions in that article and a couple of things that I'd usually nitpick on, but it's a decent enough test to show that there's really nothing to gain by following BV's advice.

His comments on Virtual Memory, pagefile performance, the Indexing Service and service management are like nails on a chalk board to me. I think a part of my loyalty to the old TTV network rotted away the day I say him on The Screen Savers.

[JDoors]

I think we just disagree on what constitutes a significant event. I have an older system with an older OS so paging, available RAM and resource useage are still significant issues.

I had a "significant event" not too long ago and lost a lot of data, thanks for reminding me about anandtech, gotta put it back in my favorites.

<edit> Ohmygod, read that public message board post regarding BV. Someone has a real tick in their nickers to go through that much trouble over someone else's website (makes me wonder what the motivation was, hard to believe anyone is that altruistic). I see many flaws in the posters methodology (for example: negative results 'prove' no advantage or are evidence of a distinct disadvantage, while positive results prove, well, that the test procedures are variable). All that hard work shouldn't go to waste though, it's obvious from the (unbelievably) extensive testing that BV's advice has no significant effect on the tested systems.

<edit> Wait! Is this proof that MicroSoft Windows is as good as it can be?

Edited September 8, 2005 by JDoors

[martymas]

i agree with cat

i usually used to go in and disable lots of things because

i thought i was freeing up resources

but i found when you disable one thing

others depend on it .

at first i didnt know weather i was comming or going .

becase i didnt know any better .

and i used black viper .

but after reading this forum

i dont think ide be to keen to disable any more.

lots of times any problem i had .

i didnt know. it was because i i disabled the appli. in services .

my, learning .learning.

marty

[Brian_Holiday]

i dont think ide be to keen to disable any more.

lots of times any problem i had .

i didnt know. it was because i i disabled the appli. in services .

my, learning .learning.

marty

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Just to chime in, I followed the guide and got no performance change.

Hey, does anyone have a GOOD tuning guide for XP?

BH

[CataclysmCow]

  Hey, does anyone have a GOOD tuning guide for XP?

It's unlikely that you need any tweaking; XP is already "tuned" as a single user, desktop OS. Unless you are using your machine in a uncommon way it's unlikely that you'll see much performance increase from anything other than turning off eye-candy.

What characteristics of XP where you hoping to change?

[JSKY]

I just want to say thanks for the info you supplied CataclysmCow. After reading this, I have done some checking and thinking (ouch! that hurt the brain cells). And now has gotten me to rethink a few things.

[Brian_Holiday]

What characteristics of XP where you hoping to change?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Specifically, the load time on Battlefield 1942 maps. I upgraded to a Gig of Ram, a faster DVD, and I will soon try to isolate my HD to a lone channel. Otherwise, the 2.4 I have is fast enough.

I realize I could probably get SCSI and do a stripe, but I really dont want to spend the cash.

BH

[mikeg]

I found that my system slowed down after following a few of BV's suggested eliminations. I think that one can accomplish far more toward increasing system efficiency by choosing "Adjust Windows for best performance" rather that the default "Let Windows decide what's best for my computer" in System/Advanced/Performance". Does anyone know of any disadvantage in making this adjustment?

[JDoors]

I found that my system slowed down after following a few of BV's suggested eliminations. I think that one can accomplish far more toward increasing system efficiency by choosing "Adjust Windows for best performance" rather that the default "Let Windows decide what's best for my computer" in System/Advanced/Performance". Does anyone know of any disadvantage in making this adjustment?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It depends on how thoroughly you tweak the options. If you're one to make a change, observe the results, try another change, check out the results again and so on, then sure, you may be able to find some tweaks that help due the way you use your particular hardware and software, things that are different enough from the norm that Windows' own settings may not take them into account.

Otherwise, that is if you aren't going to be obsessive about it ( ), then for most people with common hardware and common software using their computers in a common way, it's not going to be worth the time and effort.

It's like most tweaks: they only "work" if you completely discount the time you spent making them because you are never going to gain back enough time to make that up. But because there are a few that just might work, even considering the time spent making them, everyone keeps their hopes up and keeps fiddling with the OS.

[mikeg]

i agree with cat

i usually used to go in and disable lots of things because

i thought i was freeing up resources

but i found when you disable one thing

others depend on it .

at first i didnt know weather i was comming or going .

becase i didnt know any better .

and i used black viper .

but after reading this forum

i dont think ide be to keen to disable any more.

lots of times any problem i had .

i didnt know. it was because i i disabled the appli. in services .

my, learning .learning.

marty

[mikeg]

i agree with cat

i usually used to go in and disable lots of things because

i thought i was freeing up resources

but i found when you disable one thing

others depend on it .

at first i didnt know weather i was comming or going .

becase i didnt know any better .

and i used black viper .

but after reading this forum

i dont think ide be to keen to disable any more.

lots of times any problem i had .

i didnt know. it was because i i disabled the appli. in services .

my, learning .learning.

marty

[mikeg]

i agree with cat

i usually used to go in and disable lots of things because

i thought i was freeing up resources

but i found when you disable one thing

others depend on it .

at first i didnt know weather i was comming or going .

becase i didnt know any better .

and i used black viper .

but after reading this forum

i dont think ide be to keen to disable any more.

lots of times any problem i had .

i didnt know. it was because i i disabled the appli. in services .

my, learning .learning.

marty

[mikeg]

If one has made changes to the system or performance, is there a way to restore the default settings of Windows?