"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| Agreed on all points! (Where in the US _are_ you?)

Boston.

|
| Trouble is, if I asked you for a list of what I can turn off, you'd be
| reluctant - as I would - to give one, as all our situations are
| different. And also, if one goes around turning off low-level things
| like services, Windows itself isn't as helpful in telling you what needs
| turning back on when something doesn't work as it is when you turn of
| something basic.

Yes. That's the trouble. One needs to know the details.
I turn off DHCP because it was the only service that
I had running that needed to get through the firewall.
By disabling that I can block svchost going out. But that
means I need to use fixed IPs. Not a problem, but someone
else deciding to just shut off DHCP will find their connection
lost.

I think the biggest issue is with remote operation. I
shut down Server, Workstation and all remote functionality.
But some people want to send a job to a remote printer.
They probably need UPNP enabled. Or they want to use
Remote Desktop from work. We can't have ideal security
and ideal functionality at the same time.

| https://www.jsware.net/jsware/xpfix.php5#who1
|
| I seem to have downloaded it on 2015-9-26 (I'm presuming it hasn't
| changed since then). Is it _safe_ to try under 7? And will I get much
| benefit - you know by now my approximate level of competence, and how
| much (or little) research I'm willing to do (has declined quite a bit in
| recent months)?

As you said, it's hard to judge someone else's needs.
I made that utility just to put a lot of basic info in one
place, for myself and others. The difference in 7 will be
that the number of core services has increased. Is it
safe? Don't disable RPC. No, I wouldn't say it's safe.
It helps to get the lay of the land but it won't warn you
if you shut off something you need. Nothing can do that.

I discovered accidentally at one point that I needed
DCOM Server Process Launcher to use WMI. That's nuts.
It means that WMI won't work locally unless it's enabled
for remote use. I would never enable DCOM. Worse, the
services applet doesn't list DSPL as a dependency, which
meant it took awhile to figure out the problem. That's
trhe kind of complication that you [rightly, I think] fear.
Since I use WMI occasionally, I enable both services. For
a non-techie friend I'd probably disable both.