Is there a way to start/stop services for some programs?

Maybe my reaction was a little too harsh.

So I think we should try to get back to the core problem. It's not a lack of memory but I am a sort of user who likes to have only programs/services running that are absolutely necessary. Also, I'm interested if this is possible at all, I see this as kind of an educational thing for myself (and others might profit from that, too).

I use, for example, the Cisco VPN Client once every six weeks or so but the service starts up every time I start my computer and I think that's a waste of system ressources, even though this might not be noticable. Now other programs I use with the same (ir)regularity start their services, too, and so it adds up. Still there might be no noticable performance decrease, but the fact THAT the services are running keeps bugging me.

Bugs me even more with iTunes: It has three services (Bonjour, AppleUpdate, iPhoneHelper) that are monitoring my network and my usb devices only to start up iTunes for the rare case that I might plug in my iPhone. Sometimes I connect my iPhone to my computer only to charge it and keeping it near me but iTunes always pops up and starts it's syncing etc. I only want the program to do that when I start it manually. In this case I would like to start the three iTunes services only when I start iTunes and stop them on closing the program.

Since those services are related to the specific programs only, It has no negative effect on the overall system. I am not talking about Windows core system services here, just that one or two services needed to run a very specific (third party) program. Since services start/stop very quickly, I wouldn't mind if that slows down the start of the program by half a second or so because that's tolerable once in weeks.

And it wouldn't cause a loss of user experience / convenience, because the programs will still work fine (I tested that by manually starting/stopping services) and the services would start/stop automatically without the user noticing it.

Maybe that's just me but I am annoyed with that background stuff when it's not needed. I am a person who likes to keep it minimal but without sacrificing functionality.

A good example is Firefox: It has an update service that is inactive and only starts up every 4-5 weeks to update the brwoser, then it stops again.

My computer is NOT short of memory, I have never said that.

I want to do this because

a) I just don't want to have unnecessary services etc. running all the time (even if they don't slow down my PC noticably) and

b) I like to try out things and play around with stuff.

But thanks for that very helpful answer, anyway. I should have made a disclaimer: Please don't post useless stuff like "I don't have a solution for this very specific problem but maybe this completely different almost off-topic comment might help."

Just an observation, if the PC is that short of memory, the other party might want to consider upgrading the memory

I was thinking of a batch file, too, but what would the code look like? Maybe the task scheduler would also be a way to try.

The batch file needs to do the following things:

1. Start a service
2. Start the application
3. Wait silently in the background (and show no command prompt window!) till the user closes the program
4. When the program is closed, stop the service
5. Batch file closes/terminates itself

There are some programs I use only once or twice a month but they have services running all the time, I just don't want that. For example the Cisco VPN Client has a service always running but I need that tool only once a month or less so there's no need for the service to be running all the time. Same goes for many other programs I have. I don't want those services to use system ressources all the time.

You could do it by running the application from a batch file rather than the application directly. In the batch file you could use the command to start/stop services.

I have to ask....why are you trying to mess with the services? Is there something that is interfering?

You could also set whatever services to manual and start and stop them as required.

Hope this helps.