NI background services

[DrewBob]

NI has installed a bunch (15-20) of background services on my computer (running WIN XP) that handle a range of different tasks. These services are launched at boot up and run regardless of whether I run the LV development environment or not. In addition to using up memory, these services make repeated calls to various databases and this fires off my virus protection software (MacAfee). For many reasons, I would like to turn off these services and run them only when I launch LV.  Can anyone comment on whether this is a good idea or even possible.
Andrew

[Will.D]

I too was somewhat disappointed to see how many new services were running on my system after installing LV 8 (may have been present with 7.X, but I never paid enough attention to notice).

I'm curious as to what their necessity is really...?  I can understand device monitor, but why everything else?

[Ray.R]

Try this:

At the bottom right of the toolbar, right-click on "NI Device Monitor"

Remove the checkmark for "Run at Startup".

Actually, I should have asked if you see the NI icon on the right of the toolbar and if you are (probably) running LV8.x.

RayR

[Will.D]

JLV, I did that the second I saw it pretty much.

Things I'm concerned about:

nisvcloc.exe - considered non-essential: so why is it running all the time?
nipalsm.exe - for changing daq card states: why would I need this if I were not running MAX or LV dev environment?
I have a second copy of nipalsm.exe running for some reason
nidmsrv.exe
nimxs.exe
lktsrv.exe
lkcitdl.exe
lkads.exe etc.

I realize they are not harming the performance of my system *really*, but still.  Why should any NI software need to be running on a machine ALL the time?

And especially, while they don't affect me much, people like Andrew can be quite hindered by them.

Message Edited by Day on 08-30-2006 03:38 PM

[Derek Price]

I am also interested in why so many services need to be running.  Did you ever get a response from NI?

Thanks

[gwd]

Umm. Wonder if anyone from NI reads this board. They sometimes respond to dumb questions. Maybe we should ask a dumb question?

[Ray.R]

LOL 😄

[Will.D]

Well, with some poking around I found some info on the site...

nipalsm [link removed; article no longer available]
nisvcloc
nimxs - nothing
nidmsrv - nothing

This [link removed; article no longer available] link seems to be perfect for removing most of the lk... services.

My question remains though...  why?  Why can these not be loaded when some other piece of NI software is run (aka, LV, MAX, etc.), and then shut off when the other software is closed?

[gwd]

Well they are all loaded because msconfig tells them to load. And I'm guessing NI told msconfig to load them. The question WHY, and whether there is any problem with NOT loading them.

Inquiring minds want to know....and I'm kinda afraid to experiment myself.

If you're curious, type msconfig in the Run box, let us know what happens (but be careful, there might be dragons in there)

[DrewBob]

I have turned all but one of the NI background services from Automatic >>> Manual.  This stops them from running continously. Whether they start again appropriately when needed I'm not sure yet.

I can run MAX and LV just fine......so far.

I left the NI Configuration Manager running cos it included an annotation implying it was required.

Andrew