Services Applet
The Services applet does for services what the Devices applet does for devices. The Services applet (Figure 5.9) lists all known services within the local NT environment.
The listed services include currently active services as well as those not installed and inactive. The applet displays the status and startup settings for each service. Via this applet, you can start or stop any listed service, change its startup parameters, and add/remove the service from the current hardware profile.
Starting, pausing, and stopping a service can be useful troubleshooting techniques for processes or systems that are not functioning properly. Stopping a service does not remove the service from memory, but it does release all resources the service uses. Pausing a service simply terminates its function without releasing its resources.
A service’s startup setting describes how the service is launched during bootup. The selections accessed by clicking Startup are
Automatic — The service is started when the system is started.
Manual — The service can be started independently by a user or a dependent device. It is not automatically started during bootup.
Disabled — The service is not started during bootup and cannot be started by users, other services, or the system itself.
You can also define the security context the service uses to operate. A service’s security context is the user account the service employs. Services “log in” to the system in much the same way that users log in. Once logged in, a service’s security context (i.e., the range and extent of its rights) is controlled by the service’s assigned access token. By default, most services use the system account as their security context. Some services can use a standard user account to establish their security context. To set a service to do so, click Startup and select the This Account radio button under Log On As on the Service dialog box (Figure 5.10).
If you are using hardware profiles, HW Profiles can be used to enable and disable individual services for all existing hardware profiles. New profiles are created on the Hardware Profile tab of the System applet. Selecting a service from the Services applet, then clicking HW Profiles displays a dialog box listing each known hardware profile and the status of the selected service within that profile. Each profile status line can be altered by selecting it and clicking Enable or Disable. Changes to a hardware profile are not realized until the next time that profile is used to boot.
Tip: Removing services from a profile can improve performance in some cases, such as when the service is used only by special applications or operations. Performance improvement results from not loading services into memory. Typically, a performance improvement is noticeable only on taxed systems or systems with little physical RAM.
Tip: In some cases, you may be able to disable services, such as the print spooler, alerter, messenger, clipsrv, and tapisrv, that your system does not use at all. However, you must test your system for failures after removing the services.
Network Applet: Bindings
Binding is the process of associating network adapters, protocols, and services with one another and setting use priority for the associations. You define these associations on the Network applet Bindings tab (Figure 5.11).
By default, NT automatically binds everything to everything else. This provides the widest range of compatibility and operation, but does not offer the best performance.
Tip: By altering the binding order and altering which items (adapters, protocols, and services) are bound together, you can improve the performance of your system.
To modify bindings, select a listed item and use one of the four buttons located at the bottom of the Bindings tab. However, first you must select the display perspective. The Show Bindings for pull-down list lets you select services, protocols, or adapters as the perspective from which to view bindings. The Services selection displays bindings from services to protocols to adapters. The Protocols selection displays bindings from protocols to adapters only. The Adapters selection displays bindings from adapters to protocols to services.
Binding order is read from top to bottom: an item bound closer to the top has a higher operational priority that an item bound lower on the list. Binding priority is important. NT attempts to use the highest bound item first; if that fails, NT proceeds down the list of bound items until a working selection is found or all selections fail. To reduce wait time, bind frequently used items higher on the list. Change binding order by selecting a bound item and clicking Move Up or Move Down to increase or decrease the priority.
You can disable existing bindings or enable disabled bindings by selecting an item and clicking Enable or Disable. Disabled items have a red null-circle icon (like the ones on “No Smoking” signs), instead of an adapter, protocol, or service icon.
Guidelines for altering the bindings on your system include the following:
Bind together only items that are required to interact to support necessary tasks.
Bind only required protocols to adapters.
Disable all unnecessary services on external adapters.
Set a higher binding priority on items that are used more often.
Always test binding changes.
Your system must be rebooted for all binding changes to take full effect.
Network Applet: Protocols
The Network applet Protocols tab is the primary interface for installing and configuring network protocols. Performance can be improved by restricting installed protocols to the essentials. When possible, install a single protocol only. You should also review your TCP/IP name-resolution configurations (DNS, WINS, HOSTS, and LMHOSTS) to improve lookup performance.
Network Applet: Server Service
The Server service is the NT component that controls how resources are distributed to requesting clients. The Server service operates automatically and offers administrators little control over its operational parameters. The only adjustable setting is memory optimization, which can be changed via the Server service’s properties dialog box (Figure 5.12) on the Network applet’s Service tab. Select the Server service and click Properties.
The settings on this dialog box are
Minimize Memory Used — This setting is recommended for servers supporting fewer than 10 simultaneous users.
Balance — This setting is recommended for servers supporting 10 to 64 simultaneous users.
Maximize Throughput for File Sharing — This setting is recommended for servers supporting 64 or more simultaneous users in a file- and print-server capacity.
Maximize Throughput for Network Applications — This setting is recommended for servers supporting 64 or more simultaneous users in an application-server capacity.
The default setting is Maximize Throughput for File Sharing. If the host system is a domain controller, Microsoft recommends setting this to Maximize Throughput for Network Applications. Basically, this setting determines how much memory is used for network operations. This control has the most drastic effects on systems with limited physical RAM.
Display Applet
NT Server is most often used as a server; rarely, if ever, is an NT Server used as a workstation. Other than limited use by an administrator, no one should ever be logged into a NT Server production machine. With that in mind, you should take into consideration some profile or desktop environment settings that can drastically affect system performance.
The Display applet controls the NT video functions, including wallpaper, screen savers, color scheme, Plus! parameters, and display drivers. Generally, wallpaper and color schemes have little effect on a system’s performance. The Plus! parameters have an effect only during user interaction with the desktop; the effect is minor and focused on the display device. Screen savers, on the other hand, can bring a server to its knees. The Open GL 3-D screen savers are CPU-intensive. When active, these 3-D screen savers can push the CPU to more than 95 percent utilization for the calculations involved in displaying the generated graphics alone.
Tip: Always remove screen savers from your NT Server systems. If you need a screen saver on an NT Server machine, use the blank screen selection. It causes no CPU strain and actually reduces the load on the display drivers.
Because servers are to be used directly as little as possible, you should install the video drivers that cause the least performance impact possible. This means settling for a reduced color depth and screen resolution. Full color, 1024 x 768 screens with full SVGA capabilities place additional workload on the CPU (mainly by requesting more detailed graphical information to create the display). A 256-color display at 800 x 600 (or even 640 x 480) in VGA-only mode is much more performance-conscious. The generic VGA drivers are more performance-conscious than the specialized drivers, largely because they don’t enable the “special” features of the video card that can tax the CPU. The simpler you can make your video subsystem, the more performance improves.
Fonts Applet
The type styles NT uses and their supporting applications are managed via the Fonts applet. By default, NT installs about 25 fonts, and many word-processing and graphics applications install additional fonts. Because NT maintains graphical information about fonts (even those not in use) in system-level display memory (not on the video card itself; it can be thought of as a cache rather than true RAM), too many fonts can burden the system. This usually results in delayed display updates or screen distortions due to lack of free display memory.
Tip: Most systems perform without problems with 200 to 300 installed fonts. If you suspect you have too many installed fonts, you can remove fonts using the Fonts applet. However, be sure to maintain a backup of the font drivers just in case you remove a font that proves to be essential.
Task Manager, NT Diagnostics, and Control Panel utilities are part of NT’s performance-tuning capabilities. These built-in tools can help you locate performance problems and tune your system.
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