How to Turn Off the HomeGroup Service

From this point on, the process becomes more complicated. The next step is to disable the HomeGroup service. This is where you’ll start to see improvements to the core speed of your OS.

The Services menu can be a tricky beast — disable or pause the wrong thing, and your machine can quickly start to unravel.

To access the services menu, either search for “Services” or go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services. You’ll now see a list of all the services running on your machine.

There are two services relating to HomeGroups: HomeGroup Listener and HomeGroup Provider. You need to disable both of them.

To disable a service, double-click on the item in question or choose Properties from the right-click context menu. In the Properties window, make sure you’re looking at the General tab, then select Disabled from the drop-down menu next to Startup Type. Click Apply to confirm the changes.

Repeat the above steps for both the HomeGroup services.

The HomeGroup services will be permanently disabled and, if you’re using Windows 7, it will also be removed from the File Explorer and context menus. However, if you’re running a newer version of Windows, there’s one more step to take before every trace of the feature is gone from your system forever.