How to disable background tasks in Office 2010?

Hi, whenever I open a Microsoft Office 2010 application (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc), the following two tasks show up in task manager:

"osppsvc.exe" and "ose.exe".

The paths are:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform\OSPPSVC.EXE
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Source Engine\OSE.EXE

And I found they are related to the following services:

"Office Software Protection Platform" Service

"Office Source Engine" Service

The problem is that even after closing the office 2010 application, these tasks continue active in the background (they don't close). They seem to be essential to Office 2010 applications as disabling the corresponding service will prevent the Office 2010 application from starting.

Is there any way to tweak the registry or otherwise any other option (from within Office) so that these background tasks close when no Office 2010 program is in use? Thanks.

NOTE: These background tasks were not present in Office 2007. Using Office 2010 in Windows XP Pro SP3

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Answer

Blue Planet Man

Hi:

I JUST got off the phone with a Microsoft engineer about this exact problem. On my XP box, Opppsvc.exe from Office Pro Plus 2010 remains open all the time and sucks valuable system resources. Originally, the tech provided me with a Registry hack involving an "InactivityShutdownDelay" key which must be added to the Registry. The idea was to shut off the Opppsvc.exe after a given period of time.

He was surprised it didn't work although the key was edited exactly as he provided. It turned out, after a conversation with his developers, that XP doesn't have the capability to execute the key. Only Vista and 7.

Which would mean that if someone wants the service to turn off, you'd need to write a little .bat file to stop it for you. But I don't know how to do that. So I'll live with the stupid extra overhead or shut the service off from the Task Manager whenever I need to.

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Answer

RichDP

Hi:

I JUST got off the phone with a Microsoft engineer about this exact problem. On my XP box, Opppsvc.exe from Office Pro Plus 2010 remains open all the time and sucks valuable system resources. Originally, the tech provided me with a Registry hack involving an "InactivityShutdownDelay" key which must be added to the Registry. The idea was to shut off the Opppsvc.exe after a given period of time.

He was surprised it didn't work although the key was edited exactly as he provided. It turned out, after a conversation with his developers, that XP doesn't have the capability to execute the key. Only Vista and 7.

Which would mean that if someone wants the service to turn off, you'd need to write a little .bat file to stop it for you. But I don't know how to do that. So I'll live with the stupid extra overhead or shut the service off from the Task Manager whenever I need to.

The following bat file works for MSWord:

   @echo off
   "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\winword.exe"
   net stop osppsvc

For Excel & Powerpoint just substitute excel.exe & powerpnt.exe respectively for winword.exe

Note1: There is not need to start the osppsvc service as the MSOffice application will do that.
Note2: The second line in the bat file should be enclosed in exclamation marks otherwise it will not work.

To create a desktop shortcut simply right click on the bat file name in Windows Explorer and select Send To >Desktop

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How to disable background tasks in Office 2010?

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