Tweaking Windows Services.

Services are little programs that Windows runs behind your back.  Some are necessary, many are not.  All of them steal valuable RAM and CPU time.  You can see just what Services are slowing your machine from the Start Menu.  Do Start ->Settings->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services.  Services has an icon of meshed gearwheels.
    The services application gives you the name, a brief spiel, "started" and the startup type.  "Started" should be self explanatory.  Startup type "Auto" means load and start this service at boot time, slowing your boot and committing memory to the service even if you never use it.  Beware.  Service Remote Procedure Call (RPC) MUST be set to auto all the time.  Without RPC on auto Windows will fail to boot and the only recovery is to reinstall Windows from CD ROM.  Don't mess with RPC, it bites.
   Startup type "Manual" means Windows will load and start the service only when some program tries to use the service.  Load and start is so fast that putting services to manual doesn't slow anything down.  Setting things to manual makes the machine boot faster.
    Startup type "Disabled" means never load and run the service no matter what.  A number of services are security holes or spam gateways and should be disabled.

    I am posting the service settings that work on my machine (Blackbox), which runs Windows XP Media Center (XP with some add ons to make/fake it into being a digital video recorder).  It's a single machine home machine running by itself (no networking to other machines).   Since the number of services is vast, the service list is long and I'll post it in pieces.
   I was able to get my boot time down to 45 seconds and make Blackbox perceptibly livelier with these service settings.  I thought I'd pass them on.