Ok, here's my entry for the competition. It's called ServiceProfiles, the idea of the app is to allow you to switch between different NT Service profiles (shockingly
). The logic is that say you wanted a seriously cut down system only for certain tasks like gaming then you could make a 'regular' and a 'gaming' profile and switch between them. You be surprised how lean you can get XP while still having it perfectly usable for some tasks.
The program lets to specify two properties for services as part of a profile, startup type i.e. Automatic, Manual and Disabled, and Active State i.e. Running, Paused and Stopped. In practise you should stick to only changing startup types and rebooting after selecting a profile unless you know what you're doing. Truthfully you should really know what you're doing before using the program at all. It's difficult enough to break a system, but it's easy to mess it up enough to get you cursing my name. A
Google on the topic throws up some good reading.
Some Usage InstructionsIn the badly named 'Observation Mode' you can view a list of the services on you current machine and their properties. Once you start to make a change you'll be prompted to name a new profile. No changes will be made to your system until you 'Apply' the profile by clicking the play button in the toolbar. The events log will report the results of trying to apply your profile and report and errors if they occur along with a hint at the cause.
Any profiles you create automatically get saved in your Docs. and Sets. folder, that can be changed from the options.
Hopefully there won't be too many rough edges, but this program was the fruit of just two weeks work. I still have stuff I'd like to add, possibly going down the road of making it a neat services 'powertool' for reporting all sorts of details which the built in Windows service console doesn't but time will tell on that front. What is definite is I'll find an open source home for it and continue to refine the core profile side of the application.
One rough edge is that the app is finicky about trying to leave new profiles with the default '(unnamed)' name, it won't let you do so for boring internal reasons which I'll hopefully fix soon.
I'm attaching, just for here, a zip of three profiles based on
Black Viper's XP Sp3 Safe, Tweaked and Bare Bones configurations. I'm going to seek his permission to ship these together with his 2k and Vista configurations with the program. Hopefully he won't mind once I acknowledge and give full credits.
These three files can be loaded into the application from the menu and I'd recommend doing so when you first use it as they'll give you a better feel for the app. Also hopefully it's ok to attach the actual binaries here too, I didn't want to setup a Sourceforge account or similar until after the compo. The app is in two flavours and each is both standalone or install. Note you will need full Admin privilages to run the program. Even Vista admin user accounts will need to rightclick and select "Run as Administrator".
Note also the icon is not my own work, it comes from
mattahan's Buuf Iconset.
Update! The latest download links can now be found on this page.
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