Windows has many running services, but they aren’t all essential. It’s generally safe to disable those that are extraneous or control features you never use.

However, on the flipside, there are certain Windows services you shouldn’t mess with. They control critical system functions, and turning them off could result in security flaws, misbehaviors, or even crashes. If you poke around in the services menu, leave these alone.

Open the Services menu by typing this into the Start menu, or by pressing Win + R to open the Run dialog and typing “services.msc”.

Cryptographic Services

As its name suggests, this handles items related to cryptography, which is the discipline of securing digital information so it’s not used maliciously. You might initially think of Windows file encryption for this, but it’s used in other ways.

Windows uses this service to verify that programs you’re installing are safe, secure your browsing with HTTPS, connect to VPNs, and broadly handle encryption across your system. As these are all pillars of keeping your computer activity safe, disabling the service greatly reduces the security of your system.

DHCP Client

DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) is the network protocol your router uses to assign IP addresses to devices, instead of doing it yourself. This is a staple of home networking; unless you’ve set up manual IP addresses and don’t want automatic assignment, you should leave it on for convenience.

Windows notes that disabling this also prevents your computer from receiving DNS updates, which is another reason to keep it on.

DNS Client is a similarly important service, as it handles DNS for your computer. But because you can’t stop it, I’m not including it here.

File History Service

File History is one of the backup options in Windows; it makes periodic copies of your files so you can rewind to an older version if you run into a problem. It’s not a full system backup, but it protects you against mistaken deletions or corrupted files.

Disabling this one is self-explanatory: you don’t want to stop your computer from making copies of your important files!

Plug and Play

Plug and play is a major convenience feature that lets you start using many devices as soon as you connect them to your computer. It’s why you can plug a mouse, flash drive, or other device into your computer and use it without having to configure drivers yourself or otherwise mess around.

The alternative is connected devices not working properly, which will likely lead to your computer crashing. Keep this one enabled so your devices work as expected.

Power

This one handles all power policies on your computer, like the settings that control how long your computer must be idle before the screen turns off. Disabling this will also prevent your computer from going to sleep or using other power management tools.

That’s not desirable, so you should keep this on to prevent power quirks. Windows can’t follow all the power options you set without it.

Print Spooler

Print Spooler is a vital service for handling printing on your computer. Its job is to queue print tasks for the printer—it manages all jobs if you print multiple items at once.

Disabling this service prevents you from printing, so you should always keep it enabled. If your printer ever gets stuck and won’t handle jobs, restarting this service can clear up the issue.

Windows Audio

It’s not hard to guess the purpose of this service. It handles all audio on your PC, so it’s an important one—unless you don’t listen to music, join calls, or want to hear sound effects on your computer.

If you want your computer to shut up, there are more graceful ways to achieve it than disabling this service.

Windows Event Log

Windows keeps a lot of information about how it’s running, including problems it runs into. This service facilitates that, allowing the OS to collect and store that data.

Disabling it means losing this log of information, which is a drawback for several reasons. If Windows runs into an issue, you won’t have the history to review in Event Viewer, which gives you fewer troubleshooting options. This is also a security concern, since you can’t review events that might indicate a threat to your system.

Windows Search

Most of the services that start with “Windows” have clear names, and this is another. It handles search indexing, which is the process of building a list of results ahead of time so it can find what you search for in an instant. Without this, search would have to scan your whole computer every time, which is terribly inefficient.

Disabling this prevents Windows search from indexing files, making search less efficient. This service also controls Outlook searches. Any app that relies on Windows’ built-in search tools will also become worse after disabling this.

Even if you use a third-party tool for Windows searches, it’s best to keep this enabled so Windows search still works when you need it.

Windows Time

The Windows Time service makes sure your computer’s time is synced with the time server. By default, this happens once a week or when you boot your computer.

While it might sound unimportant to make sure your PC’s time is accurate, it carries more weight than just knowing what time it is. The most important is that SSL, which secures your browser’s connections to websites, uses your computer’s time to make sure the certificate is valid.

When you click the icon to the left of your browser’s address bar (a padlock or settings toggle), you can click on Connection is secure, then open information about the site’s certificate. These are issues for a specific period; if your computer is ahead of or behind this time, you’ll see a connection error because your browser thinks the certificate is invalid.

While your computer is unlikely to desync by more than a few seconds per week, it’s important to keep it as accurate as possible. Outside SSL, it’s also relevant for accurate timestamps and record-keeping. If you need to review critical security information or see when a file was changed, you want the best time information.

Windows Update

This service handles everything around Windows Update, including finding and downloading new updates for your system. If you disable it, Windows Update won’t function, nor will programs that rely on Windows Update’s API.

While this might sound like a desirable action if you’re annoyed by Windows Update, it’s not the best way to handle this. Turning off updates for the long term like this will open your system to more risks over time.

There are other ways to disable Windows Update temporarily, which let you control the flow of updates on your system without turning them off for good.

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Now you’ll be better-equipped to know what’s not worth touching on your next trip to the Services menu. There are other critical services you shouldn’t touch, but I left any out that don’t allow you to disable them from this utility.

Task Scheduler is a big one—if you were to disable it, all scheduled tasks would fail to run. Since Windows includes many important scheduled tasks by default, turning this off would create major issues.

It’s good to understand what’s running on your computer, but don’t get too caught up in micromanaging services. Toggling these results in marginal performance gains at best; you’re much better off using other ways to speed up your computer, including improving its hardware.