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CQC is often used on dedicated computers. Sometimes they are machines in a closet that are acting as servers for your automation system, and sometimes they are clients that you are using purely as a CQC touch screen client. For these types of machines, the default configuration of XP has a lot of functionality enabled that you will not need. You should disable all this stuff in order to maximize the amount of system resources available to CQC, minimize the overhead of the system, and just reduce the number of factors that can contribute potentially to problems. Here are some things you can do. Note that this is primarily about XP but applies basically to Vista a well, though the names and locations of some things may have changed.
Disable Services
There are many services that you don't need in a dedicated automation controller. Turning them off can significantly reduce the 'boot up size' of XP or Vista.
- The XP and Vista "Theme" service can be turned off to regain a substantial amount of memory. This service creates the XP or Vista look. Without it the GUI will have the Windows 2000 look. So kill this one definitely on a dedicated machine. On Vista it probably will get back even more resources because of the high overhead of the Vista GUI.
- Print Spooling obviously isn't needed on a dedicated machine so disable that service.
- Probably you are not using the Windows Task Scheduler service, so disable that, though on Vista that's probably not doable because it runs a raft of stuff via the scheduler seemingly.
- Turn off automatic updates. Do them manually. This will insure that the system configuration will not change behind your back, something particularly an issue for back end servers. Since no one interacts with these servers directly, you generally don't need to get today's security patches installed right away.
- Disable the remote registry management service which seems pretty much to be waving a flag and asking to be hacked anyway.
- Turn of Terminal Services service if you aren't using that (or RDP which depends on it.)
- Turn off the Wireless Zero Configuration service, unless you have some specific need for that.
- If you have no UPnP devices, then disable the UPnP Device Host service.
- If you aren't using cameras or scanners on that machine, and you wouldn't on a dedicated automation system, then disable the Window Image Acquisition service.
- Disable the Secondary Login service unless you have some specific reason to need it.
One Vista there are some others:
- On a dedicated machine you probably don't need the Application Compatibility Assistant, so disable it.
System Applet
In the System Applet from the Control Panel, there are a number of things you can turn off.
- In the Remote tab, Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop can both be disabled if you aren't using them.
- In the Advanced tab, the Performance section can be used to disable all the fancy visual effects for a dedicated server machine since they aren't of any use. And in the Advanced tab of the Performance dialog box, select the Background Services option, to tilt the machine's performance towards serving clients, instead of serving the user interface. For a dedicated client machine, turn off everything but the font smoothing feature which is still important for high quality text display.
- In the System Protection tab, turn off the system restore points on all the drives. You can create them manually if you want, before installing any new software.