I have a Dell Inspiron 8100 with XP. I made the mistake of setting up speech recognition and now it seems to start in the background all by itself. My system will be running great and then it becomes extremely slow. Upon looking in the Windows Task Manager I find sapisrv.exe running. If I end the process my system comes to life. Any thoughts on stopping and/or removing the speech recognition?

Microsoft Technet article explains this pretty well. PSS ID Number: Q316215 Article last modified on 01-29-2002 :5.5,6.0 ====================================================================== --------------------- The information in this article applies to: - Microsoft Internet Explorer (Programming) versions 5.5, 6.0 - Microsoft Office XP - the operating system: Microsoft Windows XP --------------------- SYMPTOMS ======== When you start Internet Explorer, the program may appear to stop responding (hang). Or, you may experience other system performance issues. CAUSE ===== This behavior can occur if the speech recognition feature (Sapisvr.exe) is enabled and running and there is insufficient RAM installed in your computer. Speech recognition requires at least 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM to run effectively. This requirement can cause performance issues, particularly on computers with only 64 MB of RAM. RESOLUTION ========== If you use speech recognition often but you are running into problems related to low memory, consider upgrading your computer to at least 128 MB of RAM; note that 196 MB or 256 MB will offer significantly better performance still. Also, turn off speech recognition when you are not using it. To do this, click the Microphone button on the Language bar so that neither Dictation nor Voice Command is displayed. For additional information about how to disable the speech recognition feature through the Language bar, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Q315765 Random Characters Appear in Office XP Documents or the Internet Explorer Address Bar After You Install Speech Recognition MORE INFORMATION ================ The Address bar of Internet Explorer is speech-enabled. If your mouse pointer is positioned in the Address bar while your microphone is on, the speech recognition engine will "listen" to all the noise in your environment and attempt to recognize it as dictated speech. Depending on the amount of noise in your environment, this functionality can significantly degrade the performance of your system. Steps to Reproduce the Problem - On a Windows XP, Microsoft Windows 2000, or Microsoft Windows NT 4.0-based computer, press CTRL+ALT+DELETE, and then select Task Manager on the Processes tab to determine whether Sapisvr.exe is running. If it is, the speech recognition feature may be the cause of the issues described in the "Symptoms" section of this article. Steps to Remove Speech Recognition through Control Panel --------------------------- If you rarely use speech recognition, follow these steps to remove the feature: 1. Open the Regional and Language Options tool in Control Panel. 2. On the Languages tab, click Details under "Text Services and Input Languages". 3. Under "Installed services", click Speech Recognition, and then click Remove. 4. Click OK to apply all changes. You may need to restart your computer. REFERENCES ========== For additional information about speech recognition, click the article numbers below to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Q278927 WD2002: General Information on the Installation and Configuration of Speech and Handwriting Recognition Q315765 Random Characters Appear in Office XP Documents or the Internet Explorer Address Bar After You Install Speech Recognition Q313176 Programs May Start, Quit, Lose, and Gain Focus Randomly

The speech recognition application does not only rob memory. I have 512M in my Dell P-III 600 and when the SAPISVR process is running, my processor utilization jumps to over 90% stalling my system. I disabled speech from the instructions and my systems working great!