You can go through the Start, Control Panel, Performance and Maintenance, Administrative Tool, and double-click on Services. Or you can go Start, Run, type "services.msc" and press enter – either way gets you to the same program.
Notice the tiny column labeled Description. Don’t bother trying to widen the field to read it. Just click on one of the services, and notice that the big blank section on the left side of the window displays the full description.
If the description isn’t clear, use one of the reference sites – type the service name into Google, and let it tell you where you can get more information, such as http://www.theeldergeek.com and http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm
When you find a service that you don’t want to run, use services.msc (step 1 above) to stop it and to change it to Manual.
Check out Blackviper.com http://www.blackviper.com for recommendations on which services to turn off and which to run. Blackviper is unusual in that it has an extensive table of services, showing not only the default settings for XP Home and XP Professional, but also "Safe", Internet Gateway, Gaming and SuperTweak recommendations for the
Services.
Poke around on Blackviper.com, whether you’re running 98, 2000, XP Home or XP Professional – it has a lot of information and guides for all flavors of Windows, from installation through optimizations.
Blackviper.com was off-line the last time I looked. However, you can find Blackviper.com in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine at http://web.archive.org
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