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6 Windows services I disabled to fix my sluggish PC


While I’ve got a pretty solid gaming desktop, my partner is still rocking an ancient Windows desktop that I used for gaming for a few years before I built a new gaming PC in 2020. It’s powered by what was once an excellent budget gaming CPU, the dual-core Intel Pentium G4560, along with an AMD Radeon R9 270 GPU, and only 4GB of RAM. The machine originally had 8GB of DDR4 RAM running in dual-channel mode, but one of the sticks died a few years ago.

The PC runs Windows 10, and while I offered to install Windows 11, she doesn’t need it because she only uses it for streaming TV shows, watching YouTube, and occasionally browsing the web (her main portal to the internet is her phone). While we plan to upgrade her to a decent laptop eventually, her current rust bucket is good enough for her needs in the meantime.

That said, I did debloat Windows on that PC years ago to speed it up, as well as disable a number of superfluous Windows services that were only eating up resources. I banished quite a few services, but the six listed below are the ones I recommend everyone disable on an old and underpowered Windows PC if they want to make it faster. The good news is that the process of disabling Windows services is pretty much the same on Windows 10 and Windows 11.

No one needs Windows Search constantly running in the background.

Windows Search won’t cause slowdowns on a modern Windows PC equipped with plenty of RAM and a beefy CPU, but it can consume a good chunk of memory and CPU resources on systems running older dual-core or quad-core CPUs with 8GB of RAM. Or, in my partner’s case, only 4GB.

To disable it (and every other Windows service mentioned below), first press Windows + R to open the Run dialog box. Type services.msc and hit Enter, which opens the Services window. Locate the Windows Search service and right-click it, then click Properties. Once you’re there, first stop the service, then click the Startup type dropdown menu, select Disabled, click Apply, and then OK.

Connected User Experiences and Telemetry

Sending your usage data to Microsoft can use up system resources

Windows Telemetry is a service that constantly runs in the background, collecting data about Windows usage and sending it to Microsoft. While most of that data is anonymized and relates to Windows behavior, hardware info, and similar things, some of it is privacy-sensitive. On top of that, because it’s always active, Windows Telemetry eats up resources that can be precious on an old, banged up PC.

To disable Telemetry, look for the Connected User Experiences and Telemetry service in the Services window. As with the other services, right-click it, click Properties, stop the service, disable it, and click Apply.

We’re not out of the woods yet. After disabling the service, open Windows Settings and go to Privacy & Security -> Diagnostics & Feedback. Once there, make sure to disable the Send optional diagnostic data toggle. Next, click View diagnostic data and disable the Diagnostic Data Viewer, which reserves about 1GB of storage space when enabled. Lastly, delete your diagnostic data.

Remote Desktop Services

Not needed unless you plan to remotely access your PC

If you don’t need to remotely connect to your PC (and most Windows users don’t), you can safely disable this service because it’s an always-on background process that only consumes resources. If you need remote access in the future, you can always re-enable it.

By now, you know the drill. Locate the Remote Desktop Services service in the Services window, right-click it, stop it if it’s running, disable it, and hit Apply.

Program Compatibility Assistant Service

Not needed if you keep your programs up to date

My partner’s PC only has a handful of apps installed, with the browser being the main one. She doesn’t have a bunch of outdated, obscure software that might be incompatible with Windows, so the Program Compatibility Assistant Service simply isn’t needed.

In fact, this service isn’t necessary on most PCs if you keep your programs up to date manually. To stop it, locate it in the Services menu, right-click it, click Properties, then stop and disable it.

Windows Biometric Service

Keep it running only if you use Windows Hello

If you don’t use Windows Hello, there’s no reason to keep the Windows Biometric Service running. But if you do, leave it alone.

To disable it, locate the service in the Services window, right-click it, open Properties, stop it if it’s already running, disable it, and click Apply.

Feel free to disable this service if you don’t use a printer

Since my partner’s PC is only used for video streaming and web browsing and she doesn’t have and doesn’t plan to get a printer I disabled the Print Spooler service, which constantly runs in the background, allowing Windows to communicate with any printer that may be connected to the PC.

All you’ve got to do is locate the Print Spooler service, right-click it, hit Properties, stop and disable service, and click Apply.

I also disabled many startup apps and other things

Aside from these six services, I also disabled a bunch of other services on my partner’s PC that she didn’t need running, such as Bluetooth, Telephony, Fax support, Windows Update Delivery Optimization, SysMain, Windows Camera Frame Server, Xbox-related services, as well as a number of third-party services.

I also disabled most startup apps since they can slow down Windows PCs and use CPU and memory resources, and removed ads. If you’ve got a Windows 11 PC, I also recommend removing Copilot since it can noticeably slow down your computer, especially if you have 8GB of memory or less.

While my partner’s PC is still an underpowered machine that struggles with Windows because it only has 4GB of RAM, disabling all those services and startup apps, along with debloating Windows, did help make it feel noticeably more fluid and responsive.


Windows 11 being cleaned, with a mop, bucket, and scrubbing brush.


Windows 11 was barely usable until I changed these 6 default settings

Let’s make Windows more private and performant with just a few clicks!



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Recent Reviews

Why your new TV’s motion looks blurrier than a 20-year-old plasma


Modern displays are amazing when it comes to detail, brightness, color, and all the ingredients that make for an impressive picture—except motion clarity.

CRT screens are still the king of motion clarity, but plasma flat-panel screens hold a respectable second place, and in many ways I still miss my old 720p 51-inch plasma TV and the crisp motion I gave up by switching to a 4K LCD.

Plasma solved motion the “right” way

Plasma displays didn’t just show an image—they flashed it.

While they operate on different principles, CRTs and plasma TVs have a few things in common. First, the phosphors used by CRTs and plasma displays are the same. Second, because these phosphors fade quickly, they need to be continuously refreshed.

In a CRT, the electron beam scanning from the top to the bottom of the screen achieves this, and in a plasma, a high-speed electric pulse does the same. Because of this rapid pulse-and-fade, these screen technologies have crisp perceptual motion, since our brains tend to interpret moving images that don’t pulse as “smearing” across our retinas.

The pulsing nature of plasma technology isn’t the only reason for its better motion reproduction. These screens also have very low latency and very fast pixel response times. Combined, it’s not quite as good as CRT motion handling, but it’s significantly better than LCD and OLED technology, even today.

Modern TVs rely on sample-and-hold—and that’s the problem

Stand and deliver blurry images

Blur Busters UFO Test

Modern LCD and OLED televisions are “sample and hold” technologies. They can hold each frame of video perfectly for the entire duration of that frame without deviating in brightness and then instantly snap to the next frame without any dipping to black in-between.

On paper, this sounds like a good thing, but your eyes don’t stay still when tracking motion. As they follow a moving object, the image being held on screen effectively drags across your retina, creating the perception of blur. Even if the panel itself is perfectly sharp.

You might not even realize how blurry motion is on modern displays if all you’ve ever seen with the naked eye is an LCD or plasma. However, if you see a CRT or plasma in person, the difference is quite striking.

The sample and hold issue means that no matter how much you increase the refresh rate, that type of blur persists. It’s why my 85Hz CRT monitor is clearly less blurry in motion than my 240Hz LCD monitor. It’s especially apparent when you’re playing 2D games that scroll the entire screen, with LCDs or OLEDs smearing the image in a way that gives me a bit of a headache if I’m being honest.

Playing Diablo 2 on a CRT. Credit: Sydney Louw Butler/Shutterstock.com

It creates this weird situation where a modern TV can be incredibly sharp in a freeze frame but somehow look softer than a lower-resolution display that isn’t sample and hold as soon as you press play.

Motion interpolation is a workaround, not a solution

It’s an abomination, that’s what it is

One of the “fixes” that TV makers came up with to reduce unwanted motion blur is a technology known as frame interpolation, or more commonly “motion smoothing.” Here an algorithm creates fake frames that guess at what the middle step of motion would look like if it were captured. This creates a high frame-rate video output, which we see as smoother and more crisp.

While this doesn’t take away sample-and-hold blur, it does improve motion clarity. Unfortunately, it also destroys the intended frame rate that shows and movies were meant to be seen at. It’s also useless for video games, because it introduces an enormous amount of input lag. NVIDIA’s DLSS technology is also frame interpolation, but it works for games because of several mitigations NVIDIA put into the technology. These measures don’t exist on TVs.

While some people think motion smoothing isn’t all bad, TV makers are no longer activating it by default as much anymore, and my advice is to always turn it off because the trade-offs are just not worth it.

Screenshot 2025-07-01 at 9.21.03 AM

7/10

Brand

TCL

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85-inches

The 2025 model TCL QM6K Google TV delivers a stunningly clear and bright picture with a new Mini-LED panel, improved local dimming zones, Dolby Vision IQ, and a neat new Halo Control system for improved visuals. Get this TV and elevate your living room. 


Black frame insertion tries to recreate plasma—but comes with trade-offs

Who turned out the lights?

The other trick sample-and-hold screens have to mimic what CRTs and plasma TVs do naturally is called BFI, or Black Frame Insertion. As the name suggests, the display inserts a full black frame between every original frame. This provides an instant and dramatic increase in motion clarity. However, it also has a big impact on brightness. As much as half of the light is now gone, so the image is much dimmer. Pushing overall brightness to compensate makes things hotter and more energy-hungry.

Some BFI implementations cause visible flicker, for which I personally have no tolerance at all, but the biggest problem here is that BFI doesn’t have the smooth pulsing roll off of the phosphors used in CRTs and plasma.

The future might circle back—but we’re not there yet

That might be changing, however, because a new generation of LCDs can leverage the power of multi-zone backlight technology to strobe the backlight across the screen in a way that mimics a CRT scanline.

NVIDIA’s G-SYNC Pulsar has received rave reviews from the biggest motion blur haters, and I sincerely hope that a similar technology becomes standard in TVs going ahead, so we can go back to enjoying the crisp motion we used to have without all the compromises.



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