After installing Windows 8 on my computer, I found the constant network activity from Windows services for accessing the Internet. It was very annoying as it was consuming so much of my Internet bandwidth. After some analysis I discovered that it was the Background Intelligence Transfer Service (BITS) that was responsible for this. So I went ahead and disabled it. But this service automatically starts every time you restart Windows. So I figured out the following method to disable it permanently which you can also use if needed.
Note : The BITS service in Windows 8 is required for receiving automatic updates from Microsoft. If you disable it, then the automatic updates feature may not work. You can enable it again to receive the updates. Personally, I enable it on the first Tuesday and Wednesday of every month because thats when Microsoft releases the updates.
1. Disabling BITS
- Download disable_bits_win8.zip and save it to your desktop.
- Extract the contents of the downloaded ZIP file on your desktop.
- Open an elevated command prompt and copy the following commands in it, pressing Enter after each line.
CD %USERPROFILE%DESKTOP
INSTALL.BAT - That’s it. From now on, BITS service shall be disabled every 30 minutes, even after it manages to restart itself.
2. Enabling BITS Again
- Download disable_bits_win8.zip and save it to your desktop.
- Extract the contents of the downloaded ZIP file on your desktop.
- Open an elevated command prompt and copy the following commands in it, pressing Enter after each line.
CD %USERPROFILE%DESKTOP
REMOVE.BAT - This would enable and restart BITS service and allow it to run automatically each time Windows starts.