Which Windows services are safe to disable

“Disable these 50 services for speed” lists promise a lot and break Windows Update, sound and printing. A short list of services you really can turn off on a home PC — and an honest word on how much it gives.

First, the important part

Disabling services hardly adds any FPS: an unused service sleeps most of the time and uses almost nothing. The point is different — fewer background processes, less unnecessary network activity, fewer things that can wake up in the middle of a game. So turn off only what you definitely don't need, and only in a way you can undo.

What you can disable on a home PC

• dmwappushservice (“Device Management Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Push message Routing Service”) — delivers device management messages. It's needed on PCs managed by an organization (Intune/MDM). On a home PC it's usually unused.
• MapsBroker (“Downloaded Maps Manager”) — updates offline maps for the Maps app. If you don't use offline maps, you don't need it.
• RetailDemo — demo mode for display units in shops.
• Fax — sending and receiving faxes through a fax modem.
• DiagTrack (“Connected User Experiences and Telemetry”) — collects and sends diagnostic data. You can turn it off, but the troubleshooter and some “Diagnostics & feedback” features may work worse. More in our article on Windows telemetry.

What not to touch

Windows Update and its related services, Microsoft Defender, Windows Audio, Print Spooler (if you have a printer), networking and Bluetooth services. Disabled “for speed”, they later cause strange errors whose cause is hard to track down a month later.

How to disable and undo

By hand: Win+R → services.msc → double-click the service → Startup type: Disabled. Technically that's the value Start = 4 under HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<service name>. To undo, set the previous startup type back — so note it down first. In NyxBoost each service is a separate setting: it remembers the previous startup type, shows the change before applying it, and Revert puts everything back. Administrator rights and a restart are needed.