Does TransactionScope really need the "Distributed Transaction Coordinator" service running?
See the question and my original answer on StackOverflowThe DTC service is only needed when the transaction is escalated. See more on this here: Transaction Management Escalation
Escalation can be difficult to determine beforehand as by design, this is pretty automatic wich is cool but sometimes unexpected. But, basically, if you're running a transaction on a single SQL Server (not SQL 2000 I believe you need SQL 2005 at least or escalation always happens, see this link: TransactionScope: transaction escalation behavior) instance (one "Resource Manager" / RM), there are good chances that escalation will be avoided. And in general, it's a good thing because it can be costy in terms of performance.