Disable NVIDIA Streamer Service and other NVIDIA processes

[Batu69]

NVIDIA Streamer Service, NVIDIA Streamer Network Service and NVIDIA Streamer User Agent are three of the many processes running on Windows machines that are powered by recent NVIDIA video cards.

 

NVIDIA is notorious for pushing the limits when it comes to adding new services and processes to its drivers, and if you check your process listing on your Windows PC, you may very well see more than 10 different NVIDIA processes running on it.

 

You can verify that easily by using Ctrl-Shift-Esc to open the Windows Task Manager and scrolling down to processes starting with the letter N.

 

Some of these processes may not be needed at all, and chance is good that the NVIDIA Streamer related services fall into this category.

NVIDIA Streamer Service

A recent check on a gaming machine revealed nine NVIDIA processes, and that is after using the custom installation option during installation of the graphics card driver on the system (not installing any 3D content).

 

 

So what is the NVIDIA Streamer Service being used for? It has been designed to stream games from the PC to NVIDIA Shield devices.

 

If you don't own a Shield, it is completely useless to you. What makes this a bad practice in my opinion is that the streaming services are running automatically regardless of whether a Shield device is owned or not.

 

There is no need to have these processes run on Windows machines all the time (or at all), and it makes sense to disable them as it may improve gaming performance on systems on top of that.

 

Disable the Nvidia Streamer Service

 

 

Disabling the service is thankfully pretty easy. Here is what you need to do:

 

1. Tap on the Windows-key on your keyboard, type services.msc and hit enter.
2. Double-click on Nvidia Streamer Service in the services window.
3. Click on the Stop button to disable it for the session.
4. You may receive a message stating that disabling this service will also stop the NVIDIA Streamer Network Service.
5. Click on Yes if the prompt appears.
6. Doing so terminates the running processes, but you are not done yet.
7. Switch the startup type from automatic to disabled.
8. Click Apply.

 

Other NVIDIA services and their purpose

 

This takes care of three of the ten or so NVIDIA services running on your Windows machine. Depending on how you use your video card, you may be able to disable even more processes.

 

1. NVIDIA Backend (NvBackend.exe) - This is part of Nvidia GeForce Experience.
2. NVIDIA Capture Server (nvspcaps64.exe) - Also part of GeForce Experience powering the ShadowPlay functionality. ShadowPlay enables you to record your games on your computer.
3. NVIDIA GeForce Experience Service (GfExperienceService.exe) - The main GeForce Experience service.
4. NVIDIA Network Service (NvNetworkService.exe) - Also installed with the GeForce Experience service. It prevents the update feature to work correctly which means that you won't get new driver notifications or game setting update notifications anymore. If is however not required to run GeForce Experience, and you may disable it. You will get an error dialog box however when you run GeForce Experience after stopping the Network Service (you find it under Services: stop it there and change its startup type to disabled or manual).
5. NVIDIA User Experience Driver Component (nvxdsync.exe) - Virtually no information about the process is found on the Internet. The few resources found suggest it is used for 3D only.

 

Many of these processes are related to the GeForce Experience. If you don't require any of those, then it may be best to uninstall GeForce Experience from Windows and to avoid installing it again during driver updates.

 

You may also find NVIDIA Capture Server Proxy when you are managing your startup items, and may disable it as well if you don't capture game content.

 

 

On Windows 7 and earlier, do the following:

1. Tap on the Windows-key, type msconfig.exe and hit enter.
2. Locate NVIDIA Capture Server Proxy and disable it in the program window that opens.

 

If you are using Windows 8 or newer, do the following instead:

 

1. Use Ctrl-Shift-Esc to open the Task Manager.
2. Click on More Details if you have not done so previously already.
3. Switch to Startup.
4. Right-click on the name and select disable from the context menu.

 

Closing Words

 

Please note that some of these services and processes may be reset when you install driver updates.

 

Credit to

[Israeli_Eagle]

Better never install the useless/buggy/shitty Experience part... (advanced mode)

And 3D also only if you also have any hardware for that.

[Sylence]

Thanks, very useful thread 

[straycat19]

Just checked my system I am using now and it only has two Nvidia Services on it, Nvidia Display Driver and Nvidia Update Daemon.  I don't have Experience installed since this is not my primary gaming machine.  I will check a couple systems I know I have the Experience installed on  just to see what they are running.  I don't worry about services as much as I use to since most systems today have 64GB ram  so conserving memory isn't as important as it was in days past.  Every once in a while though, I get the old tweaking itch and start playing around with services and delayed starts just to see what I can do.