Speed Up Windows XP By Turning Off Unnecessary Services

In XP, click Start -> Run, type services.msc and press Enter. Avoid the temptation to access your services via Msconfig, aka the System Configuration utility. The reason is because with msconfig and Hardware Profiles, you can disable services that may be vital to boot your system. With the management console (services.msc) you cannot. Also, msconfig, while unchecking the box, is disabling the service. But, you can use msconfig to stop the following services from startup - igfxtray, igfxpers & SkyTel on Eee PC.

BlackViper.com's list of XP services shows the default settings with Service Pack 2 installed. I have tested safely disabling the following services - Alerter, Automatic Updates, Computer Browser, Help and Support, Indexing Service, Messenger, Net Logon, NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing, Network Location Awareness (NLA), Network Provisioning Service, Portable Media Serial Number Service, QoS RSVP, Remote Desktop Help Session Manager, Remote Registry, Secondary Logon, Smart Card, Task Scheduler, TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper, Uninterruptible Power Supply, Universal Plug and Play Device Host, WebClient, Windows Time, Windows User Mode Driver Framework & WMI Performance Adapter.

Since I am using a third party firewall, I can also disable Windows Firewall. Also, I can disable System Restore Service as I don't need it on my Eee PC.