Windows 11 is running 4 services you don't need, and disabling them takes 5 minutes

Published Aug 25, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT Abhinav pivoted from a career in banking to pursue his first love in writing. Even while working full-time, he continued contributing as an editor-at-large, a role he has held for more than 7 years. A lifelong tech enthusiast who has built three gaming and productivity powerhouse PCs since 2018, his passion for technology keeps him closely following the semiconductor industry, from NVIDIA and AMD to ARM. His MSc dissertation explored how artificial intelligence will reshape the future of work, reflecting his curiosity about the wider social impact of emerging technologies. Windows 11 is known for many things. It's still the standard issue for most corporate computing systems, the most familiar OS for many users, and often the first choice for anyone building or buying a new PC. However, it's also established its reputation for a growing number of unwanted features that hog system resources. While I won't argue that many of Windows and its features don't have a place on the desktop (or rather, the background) of the right user, the problem is that they can often be enabled by default for everyone. Most people never realize what they're running on their machine, let alone decide whether they're worth the memory, CPU time, or data that they consume. Here are a few things Windows 11 does in the background that the average user absolutely does not care for. Windows Health and Optimized Experiences It's mostly useful for just laptops, so if you're on a desktop, there's no need for it Windows Health and Optimized Experiences, which appears on your Task Manager as WHESVC, is one of Microsoft's newer background services that first appeared in 2025. It starts on every Windows 11 PC as a delayed start service, and its purpose is rather narrow. It just watches your CPU load, thermals, power profile, battery, and screen brightness so that when the system starts behaving sluggishly, it records a local performance trace. There was a lot of uproar in the tech community that this particular service was created as a way for Microsoft to "spy" on its users, which was later debunked by Scott Hanselman in a statement. The Microsoft VP also added that this information is stored locally and only sends data to Microsoft based on user consent. Although definitely not spyware, the service is a better fit for laptop and mobile devices, and running it on a desktop yields no benefit for the average user. You can switch it off through Services on Windows 11. Once the app is opened, you'd need to find "Windows Health and Optimized Experiences" on the list and set its startup type to Disabled. Connected User Experiences and Telemetry Turn it off for a little more privacy This is one service that can be hidden in plain sight. I discovered this on the Processes tab on my Task Manager, where it showed up as Sevice Host: UtcSvc, which doesn't tell you a lot about what it does. The service that's underneath this cryptic nomenclature is Connected User Experiences and Telemetry, which is still widely known by its former name, DiagTrack. DiagTrack collects diagnostic and usage data, including app and feature usage, driver reliability, and performance metrics, and sends it to Microsoft according to your diagnostic data settings. While the resource overhead on a healthy desktop is not something worth panicking about, it is certainly the kind of service a privacy-conscious user would want to disable. That being said, on certain laptops, it can potentially contribute to increased background activity in some workloads and cause them to run hotter as a result. This can also be disabled by heading into Services and looking for Connected User Experiences and Telemetry, followed by clicking on Stop, and then setting the Startup type to Disabled. However, on the off chance you find the option greyed out, you can use an elevated command prompt and key in the following. sc stop DiagTracksc config DiagTrack start = disabled SysMain A service from a bygone era, for a bygone era SysMain is one of the oldest background services on Windows, and its origins can be traced all the way back to the dark ages of Windows Vista. Back then, it was known as Superfetch, and it worked by learning which apps one used most often, preloaded them into unused RAM, and make app launches a little faster. Problem with this service is the fact that it was built for an era where hard disk drives (HDDs) were the norm. On a modern PC with an NVMe or a SATA SSD, there's no point to this service, and yet it still runs in the background and shows up as unexplained disk or CPU activity. Disabling it through Services is just as plain and easy as disabling the other services on this list, and all you'd have to look for is SysMain on the list. Downloaded Maps Manager It maintains offline maps that you have never opened If you're hearing the term "MapsBroker" for the first time in this article, you've almost certainly never used an offline map on your Windows PC. Naturally, a desktop that's connected to the internet all day is never more than one Google Maps search away from directions. Which makes this service's job a little more embarrassing. It updates and manages offline maps in the background, a feature that 99% of users with access to the internet do not benefit from. If you have never downloaded any offline maps, it's another delayed-start service that just sits there. As a matter of fact, CIS Benchmarks, which are a set of enterprise security hardening guidelines used by IT teams, recommend disabling it to shrink Windows' attack surface. You can do this through Services, by searching for "Downloaded Maps Manager." Windows 11 needs a lot of trimming Most of these background services are harmless, but it doesn't mean they're useful. Some of these are just legacy features that haven't kept up with time, while others are just timeless in their ability to solve problems most desktop users simply don't have. It's important to run an audit of your machine, whether it's for reclaiming system resources, stripping out apps you never use, or simply cutting back on bloat that has become a quintessential part of the Windows experience.