Windows 11 POWER user - Background Services

hello ladies and gentlemen I am Wix I'm back with another video this time it's gonna be about Windows background services this video will be the start of a series that I'm gonna make which will be called windows power user or Windows 11 power user although most if not all of the things should apply to Windows 10 as well because they're basic Windows underground things let's say basic Advanced configuration or things like that but the first one will be about background services and uh what they are why are they there things like how how you can interact with them so without further Ado Let's uh start uh what are background services basically background services are Services processes programs that run in the background they don't have UI usually they can have UI they could show up right here in your notification bar for example if I'm uh let me show this not that no actually it works see this razor Central this is the UI of some Razer services but usually normally they don't have UI you can make them have UI like Razer did and many others but normally it's things that run in the background and they don't necessarily have UI and why are they needed well because they're always active in the background they run in the background and they listen to things what's happening to your PC or maybe from time to time they need to scan something or they need to respond to something from the network stuff like that one example of how Razer uses one of their services is to sync the colors between your razer devices so the keyboard the mouse and whatever else you have they think the same colors using a background service of course Windows uses a lot of background Services that's one of my problems with Windows there's too many background Services Linux uses background Services as well but not as many and uh most of them are needed most of them are not needed we'll get into that a bit later let's start with the beginning where can you see these background Services well there's a couple of ways one the easiest one is to go right click the taskbar go task manager and then in task manager you will see processes and then you go to services and this is where you see the services they have a status you can sort by status up here can I yeah I can so you can sort by status up here these are running there's multiple states of services the running ones of course are running if you scroll down there's stopped ones because usually Services can start to do their thing and then shut down don't know why they make them like this because you could like make a schedule task that can run at log on and then close itself but some of them do this and I think and then the next status that could be but I don't see it here is disabled so you can have services that are actually disabled and they will never run I see if task manager doesn't show them anyway this this is a list of services that are running in your computer well let's see a few examples Adobe update service this service runs in the background checks for updates for Adobe products these are usually Windows Services you can probably even see uh no it doesn't say maybe I can configure this no it doesn't say who makes them but I'll show you later you can see that too all right so let's see DHCP client oh okay I don't know I'm I'm bad at zooming screens the ACP client is you will get an IP from your router in the background when the computer starts or internet goes down and comes back up this service is responsible for getting you an IP so basically usually they're useful event log it's responsible to log everything that happens in Windows it's a service that runs in the background and yes Windows has a lot most of them are needed some of them not for example my VPN Services right now are stopped but whenever I connect to a VPN it will turn the service on and let it do its work in the background another way you can see the service so this is just the easiest way through task manager and from here you can right click on the service and then let me zoom in right click on the service you can stop and restart them from here so if I wanted let's say I want to stop all the Razer services from here I just press r if I can if I press R and find the Razor once there we go I can uh right click stop right click stop right click stop right click stop now if you wanna go into more advanced things like let's say I don't want these uh Razer services to start every time my PC boots up I want them to be manually started when I want to use razer's software like Razer synapse or I want them disabled to never run again so I don't have to come in here and click stop every time I reboot my PC to do that we're going to go to a more a bit of a more advanced UI where you can get to that by right clicking anywhere in here and go open services and that will open this UI it's called Services of course and this is a full list of services that are on your system including the disabled and stopped once so status missing means it's not running and you can see here we have a startup type this defines how the service starts if it's set to manual that means it's started whenever you're trying to use a functionality that needs this service usually this is fine you only want services to start when you need them do their job once you close the application that needs a service it should go back to not running if you ask me trigger start this this is a different it's still manual so they only start when they're needed but they can be triggered by different other things not just uh when you start an application basically and then you have disabled ones like this one this means it will never run I had I do have a bunch of Disabled Services because I don't use them and automatic means they will run every time Windows starts you start Windows it will run that's the statuses of them and to change the things let's say let's go to the Razer example again if I'm looking here all of these are running and let's say I wanna set them to manual and so they only start when I open Razer synapse right click on the service go to properties and you get this window and then you can change your startup type from automatic which means every time Windows starts to manual and click apply and ok and then this service will only start when you open the Razer synapse application for azer is it's a bit different because they all start when you open laser synapse I don't know why Razer did it like this when you start receiving apps all of these services start running and that's kind of pissing me off but normally if you set a service to manual from here it will only start when an application needs it unless it's a Windows service I own I would not recommend doing this for Windows Services unless you know exactly what you're doing in razer's case I know that I can set them to manual and they will start whenever I open synapse and mostly for third-party application like Outlook parallel is a good example this one is on manual see Bella is on manual which means whenever I open a game that uses better attitude this service will start otherwise it stopped that's manual so you can manage them from here right click properties and then you can do more than that you can start stop pause the service you can change the startup type automatic manual or disable to never run you can do a bit more things like you can set which user from the system the service will run as basically if it needs more um permissions in your PC this user should be one with more rights in your PC what happens when the service fails you can set it to restart a few times this is these are more advanced stuff but uh this video is only about services and how to manage them so you can you get here as I showed but there's another little trick that you can do to get straight to this window so you don't have to go to the start to the task manager go Services go here stop and you can't even change the startup time the startup way then you have to go open services and then you get here it's too long as a power user what I do you press Windows key and r and you get the Run window and then you type Services dot MSC press enter I didn't type services press enter and then you get this UI straight straight away so you don't have to go through task manager of course you can sort by status by startup type and evaluate and in this UI which is why I like this one better is that you can you have a description of what it does right here so of course you should Google every service that you want to turn off because it might be needed but usually the Microsoft ones have a good description on them and if I go to Crow I don't know what's wrong with my zoom connector should be some connected also by name please and then if we go to C there's one called connected something experience thank you connected yeah connect to the user experience to limit this is the Telemetry service that Windows has you can right click properties on this one and as you can see disable all telemetry good to know your windows telemetry so yeah read what you do Google them see if you can stop them or not but so far we've covered what services are what they do how you can manage them let's continue to a bit more because yeah you can I mentioned part users so this is a bit of a power user I'm sure because you need to know where you can find them and what they do and why are they here and most applications like Razer has background Services even Nvidia has background Services if you check they have a display container frame views SDK service some of them are stopped some of them are working but yeah everybody has a background service these days even Oculus OneDrive has background services so everybody has background services but for things like um Adobe for example I don't want those running in the background I'm updating Adobe whenever I use Photoshop or something so those Services I always keep turn off or not disabled because you need them when you start Photoshop but they're set to manual they never start on their own for other example is VMware which is a virtual machine software it keeps a lot of services in the background I turn those off to on manual so basically you're saving some uh PC processing power by turning off services that you don't need that were installed by software that like Razer Central has six services in the background what why so yeah you can go one by one and click stop stop set your manual manual manual you can also right click on the task bar go to task manager and then in task manager over here there's a startup section right here startup apps and in here you can disable these services from starting this is not the same as setting the services in here to manual it's a different process that you're preventing from running this this in in here in the startup apps this is an actual application as you can see this is Razer synapse 3. so I'm preventing this application to run a startup but the services that this application uses they will still run at startup if they are set to run automatically here so that's that's the difference you should always turn off all the applications from startup apps that you don't want to run when Windows boots for example I don't know phone link for Microsoft don't need that one Windows boots don't need Xbox apps don't need terminal to start one Windows boots and so on don't need Discord to start when Windows boost don't need creative clouds to run and a lot of those things I've disabled a lot of things because whenever you install something they get out of here so they start with Windows and then they start off faster when you click them but they use use processing power in the background with you and maybe not even needing them at that point so yeah turn off everything in here that you don't need but this is I still want to push the point over this is not the same as stopping the background services for these applications for the background Services you gotta go here and stop them from here and change the startup type for them okay so we we got through those two ways of seeing the services now let's see are you afraid of the terminal power users do use terminals don't be afraid of it it's not hard let's open up a terminal so what I did here is as I said I like to turn off services so if I LS in here LS just shows you the contents of the current folder I'm in and you can see I have a bunch of uh Powershell scripts that start VMware Services stops the Razer Services stops the VMware Services when I'm done with them this is a different thing basically you can make scripts that you can run from the Powershell from the terminal and instead of going to so this is at MSC instead of going here for Razer for example and going right click stop right click stop right click stop right click stop it's too much right with power users we don't do that here and instead of doing that you're going to make a partial script and uh to communicate with services or to manage services from Powershell there's a few tools one of them is get service oh wait yeah get execution policy first things first uh Windows might have a policy set for Powershell by default to not run any Powershell scripts on your system if you if that's set then you won't be able to run your own Scripts but you can change that so you can do get execution policy press enter and you will see mine is set to remote signed yours might be set to restricted or something or unrestricted if it's unrestricted it's bad you should set it to remote signed if it's restricted then you can't run any Powershell scripts on your system so I suggest you set it to remote signed so to do that you set execution policy Windows is suggesting parameters but no I just oh no this was to install chocolate but anyway you just do execution policy remote signed and then you have to give it local my scope local machine and press enter and then you will set the well you need to be in a console as administrator to do that right click on the start bar my start menu click terminal as admin right here and you'll get a console that has admin rights actually I'll do it right now because it's easier give me another one thank you so yeah now that we set the execution policy so we can run Powershell there's some commands get service I have a command prepare ready but let's take it one by one so basically here I'm saying Hey I want to get all the services that have a display name that starts with Razer basically the star means anything so I'm just saying it should start with this reward razor and then anything can follow after it press enter and you're getting all of these and as you can see you get a status of the service of the background service you get a name for it this is the windows name for it and I get a display name which is the friendly name that the user sees and we got a list of services that are running and then to do more with that we will pass that to another Powershell command which is Select object basically what select object does is from the output of the First Command because this is a pipe what this pipe does says hey take whatever this command outputed and give it to this command as the input so basically we're going to take the whole list that gets service outputs and give it to this select object the command and we're saying from all this information I just want to name this play name and status in that order so if I press enter now as you can see we have name display name and status so we got the running service I mean right now there's no condition for status but we got all the Razer services and we display them nicely with name display name and Status the next step for this would be to stop all these services in a single move and for that I have made a script it goes like this don't worry about this top part this is only needed if you want to run the script in a non admin terminal but if you run the terminal as administrator this doesn't matter and what we're doing here basically the same command or taking the list of all the services that start with Razer and we're putting them in the services variable a variable basically is a slot of memory we're storing the whole list that we saw over here now this whole list we are storing it in this dollar Services variable and then when we do you go for each line in that Services list if the service status because we have status up here we are outputting status if the status basically that's what this means if the status is running then we're going to do a stop service and stop Services another Powershell command you can do it manually nobody is forcing you to use script you can do stop service stop service and then you give it the name and this is not but I could give it I don't know RZ action SVC this will stop the service there's more parameters to this you can do minus Force which will force the service to shut down not to wait for anything else and then there's another one let's just pass through which will output what service got stopped by the stop service command because otherwise the stop service command will not output anything it will not tell you hey I stopped it it would just silently close but it will stop the service but it will just sign it close it won't tell you anything so this is what stop service does and basically what we're doing in that script is take this list then go one by one look at the first service comparing the status is it running okay then stop service go to the second one is the status running yes okay then stop service go to the third one this is running a fiest and stop service that's basically what this script means we're taking the list of services putting it in services and then for each service in that list we're checking hey this service status does it equal running if yes stop service then four will go to the next service and to the next service and you will pass in this entire list it will go through the to each of these entries in the list check the status and call stop service on each of these services and now let's see how it runs right to run it we're just gonna have to this is an admin Powershell so I just go stop Razer boom and see it outputs stopped razor stopped razor stop razor stop razor this one's giving an error cannot stop service on computer but it's lying the service is indeed stopped see there's no Point there's no running eraser service up here and they are set to automatic because I do let them boot up on or start on Windows boot because I want the devices to sync color but then you can stop the services and the colors will still stay synced which is great and I think that's it should have been a terminal don't be afraid the terminal it's not scary it's very helpful so basically if you save this uh this little partial script has stopped for me stop razer.ps1 Powershell scripts have a an extension of PS1 then you just run that in in an administrator uh Powershell terminal it will just go through all the Razer services and stable each and every one of them and then everything's not running in the background which is what you want if you want this I mean I'm just showing how you can automate Closing Services that you don't want yes you can set them to disable and they will never run then or send them to manual and they will only run when they're needed but in my case I want this to start automatically at every Windows boot and then I want to stop them manually because they do some things when they start up to sync my devices and then I don't need them anymore I can just close them that's why I'm doing like this but this was just a demo of how you can manage services with Powershell with the services UI services.msc with the services UI if you want to change the startup type for them or with just task manager if you just want to go to services and stop a bunch of them and that's it for me for this video I will have more videos following the windows power user Series this was just the first one I thought about because I don't know if people know the Sea of background services that runs in the background on Windows and most of them for the the Adobe ones the Razer ones the I don't know office ones I usually turn those off don't need that and that's another way to maybe make your computer run faster close the services that you don't need from various 15 applications that you installed if you set them to manual and disable them from running task manager from startup apps disabled here set their services to manual you're done also uh with with the script from Powershell you don't necessarily need to do stop service you can also there is also a set service command here that can change that um execution policy basically set service to run manually automatic or disabled you can do that here too but in my case I uh just did stop service because that's what I want to do of course you can Google a bunch of service related commands with powershellite I'm just making this video to get you started with Powershell and see how easy it is compared to Mouse clicks to each and every if it's five Services go to each and every one of them stop right click stop right click stop right click stop now just make a script run it you're done kills everything you need and I think that's it yeah I'll catch you in the next one have a good night Day morning or whatever time is it there and cheers

Channel: Whixcraft

Views: 415

Keywords: windows11 poweruser, windows11 background services, windows 11 poweruser, windows 11 background services, windows 11, windows11

Id: tgwC2DoMjLU

Length: 27min 36sec (1656 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 06 2023