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mentioned above, does a good job of protecting your computer against these threats as well.

Unnecessary Services and Processes

The default installation of Windows(c) configures a number of services that run automatically whenever the system is booted, many of which are never needed by the majority of users. Stopping these processes and preventing them from running can free up significant memory and CPU utilization. Some of this can be accomplished using Windows' services interface. Getting to this interface differs between versions of Windows, but it will be similar to this: Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services. Here you will see the list of installed services. For each one you don't want to run automatically every time you boot up, right-click on the name and select 'Properties.' In the dialog box, set the Startup Type to

'manual.' If you're sure you never want the service to run (for example, if you suspect it is some kind of malware), set it to
'disabled.' You can always change it back to 'automatic' if you experience problems. Once you've finished setting the startup type on any services you've modified, you should reboot your computer. Simply stopping a service does not always completely free up resources that may have been reserved.

The following are some services that are rarely needed by most users:

* Messenger Service (has nothing to do with instant messenger (IM) software)

* Remote Registry Service (do you ever need to edit your registry from a remote location?)

* Error Reporting Service (pops up the annoying "notify Microsoft about this bug" every time something crashes)

* Alerter (no need for this)

* Fast User Switching Compatibility (even with this disabled, you can still log off and log back on as someone else)

* Telnet (if you must enable a command-line log on from a remote location, use a secure shell (SSH) service instead).

There are other services which you may be able to disable, and there are other (non-service) processes that may be started by Windows. You can see which processes are running on your system by running the task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del -> Task Manager) and selecting the Processes tab. These are started from registry entries, items in the Startup folder, and a number of other sources. With the task manager you can kill any of these processes (if you know which ones should be killed), but unless you find out where they're coming from and remove the source, they will automatically restart.

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