Examine operating system services
To troubleshoot system service issues, you must understand the differences between the different system services. System services have three distinct groups: software applications, operating system services, and hardware devices and their associated device drivers.
Applications operate at a high level through personalization by the user, and at a lower level by integrating with the operating system. You install applications after you install the operating system, and you must start applications manually to use them.
Operating system services are part of the operating system rather than something that you install after the operating system deploys. Additionally, operating system services function with no user action. In fact, they start before a user signs in to the computer.
The difference between operating system services and device drivers is that device drivers interact directly with hardware devices or components, while generally an operating system service interacts with other software components in the operating system. From a management perspective, the difference between device drivers and operating system services is more obvious. You use Device Manager to manage device drivers, and you use the services Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in to manage system services.
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