Reducing NI Footprint (Disabling Services and Un-necessary Tasks)

[lvb]

After installing a bit of NI software and going through a few upgrades, I feel that there is too much un-necessary NI software continuously running in the background and at startup. This thread is to discuss what software and services can be set to launch in manual mode when necessary along with what is absolutely required.

The ideal situation would be to create a batch file that can launch and kill the necessary applications and services. For instance, a batch file for using MAX, LabVIEW, TestStand, and so on.

I have attached my current task list and startup service list for reference. A few things to note:

1. There are 101,632KB of programs running after I start my PC!

2. There are 14 services that are launching during startup (automatic mode)

3. The following services are under the nipalsm.exe process:

• NI-488.2 Enumeration Service [ni488enumsvc] - 3,312KB
  
• NI Device Loader [nidevldu] - 15,772KB
  
• NI-Motion Device Manager [nimcdldu] - 6,208KB
  
• NI PXI Resource Manager [nipxirmu] - 6,012KB
  

4. I am using sysinternals process explorer (http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/ProcessExplorer.zip)

Let's discuss how to reduce the footprint of the NI software and how we can selectively launch the required applications when we want to use NI products.

Thanks!

[lvb]

After browsing some more, I stumbled on this thread on the other side: NI Background Services

[lvb]

Anyone interested in discussing this topic?

[Ben Scott]

QUOTE (brianafischer @ Feb 25 2009, 10:54 AM)

Let's discuss how to reduce the footprint of the NI software and how we can selectively launch the required applications when we want to use NI products.

I realize I'm kind of late to the party, but I just found thread this while searching for this sort of information.

I've had to do some research on this front, for security reasons (reducing attack surface) as well as performance. I've just finished documenting what I know on the LAVA Wiki: http://wiki.lavag.org/NI_services

Hope this helps!