Win-7 recommendations

EUMETSAT Recommendations

For Windows-7, the number of automatically started processes has increased, and these "services" may increase the CPU, disk or network load to the extent that packets of EUMETCast data become lost, resulting in missed images or parts of images. I tried some of the recommendations in July 2012 and found that they did help, but I also needed to back out some of the changes. Here are the EUMETSAT recommendations and my notes. Your experiences may differ, and I would be grateful for any feedback and any corrections.

Services to be disabled

	Service	My comment
1	Automatic Updates	Disabling this service will also stop manual Windows Updates from working. If you also use the PC for interactive work I would not recommend disabling Windows Update.
2	Themes	This will produce a less attractive desktop, but one requiring less CPU to render.
3	Fast User Switching	This does not appear to be a service in Windows-7.
4	SSDP Discovery Service
5	Wireless Zero Configuration
6	IPSEC Service	Was not running on my PCs.
7	cftmon	This is not a service, and is related to multi-language keyboard input.
8	Certificate Propagation
9	Desktop Window Manager Session Manager
10	Distributed Link Tracking Client
11	Function Discovery Provider Host	This will also stop the Windows HomeGroup Provider service.
12	IP Helper
13	Offline Files	Was not running on my PCs.
14	Print spooler	Left running on one PC which also provided print services, although running a printer on a PC receiving EUMETCast is not recommended.
15	Program Compatibility Assistant
16	Security centre
17	TCP/IP NetBIOS helper	Left running, as without this service, you may lose the ability to connect to files on remote PCs, although remote PCs will still be able to see your files.
18	Windows Connect Now	Was not running on my PCs.
19	Windows Search Indexing
20	Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service

System Settings

The only one of these I tried was the recommendation to increase the size of the lookaside lists - for improved file performance. Right-click the Start, All programs, Accessories, Command prompt icon, and select Run as Administrator. Here is a sample run. Note that you will need to reboot following this change.

C:\Windows\system32>fsutil behavior query MemoryUsage
MemoryUsage = 0

C:\Windows\system32>fsutil behavior set MemoryUsage 2
NOTE: Changes to this setting require a reboot to take effect.
MemoryUsage = 2

Remove MS OS Software

(Not tried, but MS Outlook Express is not used with Windows-7).

Disk Layout

(Note the requirement for NTFS partition formatting). Normal good practice is to separate the OS (Windows) and data partitions. When starting with a new PC, you may want to have the OS and some software on a faster SSD (solid-state disk), and the data and other rapidly changing content (such as my own software) on a separate 1-2 TB hard disk, so that the number of writes to the SSD is minimised. The SSD write lifetime is finite.

Other items to be considered

(No comment).