Question

What HP services are not required, trying to optimize system [hpqcxs08, Net Driver HPZ12, Pml Driver HPZ12]

Asked by: LuckMan212

I have an HP DeskJet 6940 printer installed via Ethernet.  The client machine is a Core2 Duo E6850 running Vista Ultimate 32-bit, 4GB of RAM.  I am trying to optimize this system by reducing un-necessary drivers and services.  I did the "bare-bones" install of the HP software however I still noticed some bloat afterwards.  Specifically, I am curious about the following services:

hpqcxs08 - C:\Windows\system32\svchost.exe -k hpdevmgmt
Net Driver HPZ12 - C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe -k HPZ12
Pml Driver HPZ12 - C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe -k HPZ12

I discovered these via Process Explorer (SysInternals) and they are collectively taking around 30MB of RAM and consuming 3-5% CPU cycles which to me is unacceptable.  Does anyone have experience with these, can you tell me what their function is, and which if any I can safely disable/delete?

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Asked On
2008-02-03 at 22:39:10ID23134106
Tags

Hewlett-Packard, HP

,

DeskJet

,

6940

Topics

Printers by HP

,

Drivers

,

Windows Vista

Participating Experts
1
Points
125
Comments
2

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Answers

 

by: souseranPosted on 2008-02-04 at 06:45:31ID: 20814726

The PML Service allows you to transfer a scan from the printer to the computer. You can set it to Manual, and only enable it when you need to use this function.

 

by: LuckMan212Posted on 2008-02-04 at 22:40:29ID: 20821085

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.  I will award partial points for this.   I do not have a multi-function unit (no scanner- its just a printer)  After experimenting a bit, I discovered that the Pml service seems to also be required for querying the printers ink levels.  If I manually stop the service, as soon as I run the HP Toolbox again and click on the "Ink Levels" tab, the PML service gets launched again.  So I elected to not disable this service.  I disabled all other HP services/processes with no apparent side effects.  All printing functions still work fine, and as long as PML service is running I can service the printer, do alignments, show ink levels etc.   I wrote a small batch file to assist with configuring these services "en masse" in the event I do an OS reinstall sometime down the line:

@echo off
echo configuring 'hpqcxs08'
sc config "hpqcxs08" start= disabled
echo.
echo configuring 'hpqddsvc'
sc config "hpqddsvc" start= disabled
echo.
echo configuring 'HPSLPSVC'
sc config "HPSLPSVC" start= disabled
echo.
echo configuring 'Net Driver HPZ12'
sc config "Net Driver HPZ12" start= disabled
echo.
echo configuring 'Pml Driver HPZ12'
sc config "Pml Driver HPZ12" start= auto
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo Done.  Press any key to exit.
pause>NUL
                                              
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