Tweaked Services

Hello all!

Anyone out there who has installed SP2 on a system with Services tweaked according to Black Viper?

If so, is Your experience good?

The reason I ask is that some Windows Updates have not been successful with a certain service disabled. As a precaution, I'm considering setting all services back to the default setting but if that's not necessary, I might spare me the trouble.

Thanks for Your time,
Christer

 

Hi Christer,

Did that - Services tweaked according to Black Viper for SP 1 (he has a list for SP 2 which I have not yet had the opportunity to check out). The only problem I encountered was the need to enable BITS - Background Intelligent Transfer servive (this is disabled under BV's 'safe' set up) to get Windows Update v5 to work - in fact Windows Update 'told me' to do this.

 

Thanks Pete!

KB840374 didn't install correctly with the Help and Support Service disabled.

KB842773 didn't install correctly with the Background Intelligent Transfer Service disabled.

I assumed that any disabled service might cause trouble but according to Your experience, none of them do.

However, I suspect that anyone who hasn't installed the mentioned updates could end up in trouble ...... ...... !

Christer

 

I have that running on Auto as I find it useful at times!

 

Help and Support Service disabled -> As I recall, I couldn't even open the update site with this disables. It was either Help and Support of the Auto Update service...

 

Kent

Good point - I must be going senile! I'm totally convinced in my own mind that I saw a list on BV's site - even remember thinking 'no point in printing that out until I get SP 2'. Sorry about that - clearly my coffee input, especially over the last week in hospital, has been inadequate.

 

Jim,
that list will be interesting as a cross reference to Black Viper. In some cases ...... ...... they don't agree on which setting is the default!

Christer

 

Guys,
thanks for Your input!

It seems pretty "safe" but I think that a fresh Ghost Image won't be an overkill anyway ...... ...... !

Christer

 

Charles,

Well, the transfer rates vary from system to system but are "normally" in the 800-1,200 MB/min range, depending to a degree on processor speed since the transfer is in PIO mode.
However, compatibility issues regarding the motherboard chipset, type of harddisk(s) and file system may produce very disappointing figures.

On my system, if the target partition is NTFS, transfer rates are ~810 MB/min but if the target partition is FAT32, transfer rates are ~140 MB/min.
A friend and I, have done some empirical tests involving different HDDs, different chipsets and different file systems and have come to the conclusion that my motherboard, with a VIA VT82C686B southbridge doesn't handle FAT32 that well. My friend reproduced the low rates on FAT32 on his motherboard which has the same chipset. He also has an additional Promise controller which produce only small differences comparing the two file systems.

This is a problem because I'd rather format the target partition FAT32 since NTFS has its reserved MFT space which Ghost knows nothing about (it writes into the reserved MFT space without knowing any better) and if You are unlucky ...... ...... it can cause image corruption.

Needless to say, I have reluctantly formated the target partition NTFS and creating an Image of my system partition of some 2.5 GB (less pagefile which is excluded from the Image) takes 3.5 minutes.

That, of course, doesn't include preparing the system for an "as clean as possible" Image ...... ...... and You know how long that may take!

Christer

 

From my own post:

That was a load of bull ...... ...... the transfer mode is UDMA!

Christer

 

Well Charles,
I think that Your questions are as adequate as my questions would be!

I'm completely "ghostified" and since Ghost never has let me down, I have not bothered to study the competition. The fact that Drive Image and Ghost are on the path of amalgamation ...... ...... actually worries me!

Christer