How-To Geek

What is svchost.exe And Why Is It Running?

You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering why on earth there are nearly a dozen processes running with the name svchost.exe. You can’t kill them, and you don’t remember starting them… so what are they?

This article is part of our series explaining various processes found in Task Manager, including: jusched.exe, dwm.exe, ctfmon.exe, wmpnetwk.exe, wmpnscfg.exe, mDNSResponder.exe, conhost.exe, rundll32.exe, Dpupdchk.exe, and Adobe_Updater.exe.

Do you know what those services are? Better start reading!

So What Is It?

According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”. Could we have that in english please?

Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusability… but the problem is that you can’t launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (.exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born.

Why Are There So Many svchost.exes Running?

If you’ve ever taken a look at the Services section in control panel you might notice that there are a Lot of services required by Windows. If every single service ran under a single svchost.exe instance, a failure in one might bring down all of Windows… so they are separated out.

Those services are organized into logical groups, and then a single svchost.exe instance is created for each group. For instance, one svchost.exe instance runs the 3 services related to the firewall. Another svchost.exe instance might run all the services related to the user interface, and so on.

So What Can I Do About It?

You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don’t absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance.

The biggest problem is identifying what services are being run on a particular svchost.exe instance… we’ll cover that below.

If you are curious what we’re talking about, just open up Task Manager and check the “Show processes from all users” box:

Checking From the Command Line (Vista or XP Pro)

If you want to see what services are being hosted by a particular svchost.exe instance, you can use the tasklist command from the command prompt in order to see the list of services.

tasklist /SVC

The problem with using the command line method is that you don’t necessarily know what these cryptic names refer to.

Checking in Task Manager in Vista

You can right-click on a particular svchost.exe process, and then choose the “Go to Service” option.

This will flip over to the Services tab, where the services running under that svchost.exe process will be selected:

The great thing about doing it this way is that you can see the real name under the Description column, so you can choose to disable the service if you don’t want it running.

Using Process Explorer in Vista or XP

You can use the excellent Process Explorer utility from Microsoft/Sysinternals to see what services are running as a part of a svchost.exe process.

Hovering your mouse over one of the processes will show you a popup list of all the services:

Or you can double-click on a svchost.exe instance and select the Services tab, where you can choose to stop one of the services if you choose.

Disabling Services

Open up Services from the administrative tools section of Control Panel, or type services.msc into the start menu search or run box.

Find the service in the list that you’d like to disable, and either double-click on it or right-click and choose Properties.

Change the Startup Type to Disabled, and then click the Stop button to immediately stop it.

 

You could also use the command prompt to disable the service if you choose. In this command “trkwks” is the Service name from the above dialog, but if you go back to the tasklist command at the beginning of this article you’ll notice you can find it there as well.

sc config trkwks start= disabled

Hopefully this helps somebody!

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Comments (544)

  1. January 24, 2008 9:25 am
    Rich

    I always wondered what this was and why so many were running. Thanks very much for the clear and excellent explanation!

  2. January 24, 2008 9:55 am
    Jon

    Thanks for this! Like Rich said above, I’ve always wondered too!
    Is there anywhere to get a list of the “common” windows processes that shouldn’t be shut off; ie core windows services? That would help with making sure the mistakes are kept to a small minimum…

    Much thanks!

  3. January 24, 2008 10:17 am
    Jon

    Thanks again for the quick response! I totally agree with you with the “one config to bind them all” scenario never happening {no matter how much some might want it! ;-) }

    I will check the Black Viper guide when I get home tonight!

    Cheers,
    Jon

  4. January 24, 2008 1:45 pm
    whs

    This is very useful and helpful. Thank you Geek for taking the time to put it together. WHS

  5. January 24, 2008 5:49 pm
    Chris

    Thanks for this excellent guide, it is hands down the best explanation of these svchost.exe processes I’ve read anywhere (I don’t know why everyone always feels the need to be so cryptic about everything). Clear, concise, perfect. Thanks!

  6. January 24, 2008 6:51 pm
    Jennifer

    Thank you for this simple explanation. I work with .dll and .exe programs daily but am new to the field. This not only cleared things up for windows but explains why the programs I create need a .dll file to run.

  7. January 24, 2008 10:07 pm
    k.s.reddy

    Excellent information on svchost.exe. This simple, clear explanation clears all my doubts regarding svchost.exe. Thank u very much.

  8. January 24, 2008 10:51 pm
    diya

    What command are we supposed to enter in win2k?
    tasklist /svc gives an message “‘tasklist’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
    operable program or batch file.”.

  9. January 24, 2008 11:08 pm
    Planet Lowyat

    Thanks for the tips. I’m wondering what is this before.

  10. January 25, 2008 2:11 am
    Peter

    Thank you so much for this awesome guide. Really very useful. :)

    I would like to add one thing! If the service name is “scvhost.exe” then its a virus. Also if Username of “svchost.exe” service entry is other than “System”, “Local Service” and “Network Service”, then its a virus.

    I’ll wait for your service guide. :)

  11. January 25, 2008 2:43 am
    Jimmy

    THanks for the info! It’s really nice! I wondering how to do it in Windows XP. I can’t ge the “go to services” menu on right click, can you guide it on XP ?

  12. January 25, 2008 6:29 am
    Lawk Salih

    Thanks for the post. I have stopped most of the unwanted services for the time being.

    Best,

    Lawk Salih

  13. January 25, 2008 6:49 am
    Mathieu

    You answered the question I was tired of asking around and eventually forgot about it. If I have any more question about computers, i’ll know where to come first next time.

    Thanks!

  14. January 25, 2008 7:08 am
    Walter

    Thanks.
    All the info contained in this article was konown to me, it is the combination you propose that is valueable!

  15. January 25, 2008 7:08 am
    ScottK

    Great article Jon! I’ve always wondered what all those svchost.exe’s were.

  16. January 25, 2008 8:31 am
    Cartman

    Excellent, Thanks for explaining this!

  17. January 25, 2008 9:07 am
    fedmich

    Great article :) very easy to understand

  18. January 25, 2008 9:32 am
    John Powell

    Thank you for the great explanation of something I have always wondered about.

  19. January 25, 2008 9:34 am
    Wes Sabi

    tasklist is not included with XP home, only XP Pro

  20. January 25, 2008 9:51 am
    Pavan

    And how do I go ahead doing this for non vista and non XP systems?

  21. January 25, 2008 11:26 am
    Chandoo

    Thanks alot for this info, I have always wondered what svc processes are up to. @peter, thanks for the links… :)

  1. January 25, 2008 11:41 am
    joshua

    This only works in Pro, you should indicate that. Most people that need this article will be running Home so its pretty irrelevant. Nice try though

  2. January 25, 2008 11:43 am
    abhishek bhatnagar

    quite good post…but i think disabling services related to svchost.exe could prove a loss in some functionality…but its ok if someone knows about the service completely before disabling.

  3. January 25, 2008 2:43 pm
    Braintrove.com

    Great article. Thanks!

  4. January 25, 2008 2:59 pm
    Rene Zuleta

    Ahhhhh thanks for this complete and easy to understand explanation.

    I guess I can have some sleep finally!

  5. January 25, 2008 3:55 pm
    Kyro_Kun

    Thank you very much for the explanation.

    Finally a good night sleep for us all!

  6. January 25, 2008 6:31 pm
    dar

    Kudos
    -You’ve given a better explanation than searching on google a week could!

  7. January 26, 2008 4:47 am
    lankapo

    gosh, thanks for the info. At last , I know what is svchost all about.
    I always tweak my services sometime even crash my laptop.

    what would be the must turn off service for vista?

  8. January 26, 2008 7:49 am
    Ryan

    Thank you for this! :)

  9. January 26, 2008 12:02 pm
    Ammar

    Very informative. Thank you for all that you do.

  10. January 27, 2008 11:40 pm
    aakash

    Wow!, It’s a great article. This site rocks man! I was always wondering what is this service all about but never actully try to dig it more.
    Thanks for sharing.

  11. January 28, 2008 5:22 pm
    Dimitarc and

    I have answer to that…..its called LINUX and it has penguin on the cover.

  12. January 30, 2008 4:40 pm
    Teen

    tasklist /SVC | more
    show all list

  13. February 1, 2008 1:58 pm
    Pradeep

    Great article

  14. February 2, 2008 8:33 pm
    coolsak

    awesome.

  15. February 3, 2008 11:10 am
    dave

    What happens if you just have a regular home edition of XP.. I tried doing the cmd prompt with Tasklist/svc but it didn’t work.

  16. February 5, 2008 9:09 pm
    Darrell

    To Dave: tasklist /svc works only with XP pro…….

  17. February 6, 2008 8:34 am
    gerald

    Hi good evening..
    I need Help.. theres a problem in my PC when I restart my computer I doesn’t restart..or it wont execute when I click “restart? and I just restart it manually……some of my friends told me its because of the Virus called “svchost.exe? does it possible…..can this be true….plssss Help me…

  18. February 8, 2008 6:10 pm
    Steven Klassen

    Great article, thanks!

  19. February 11, 2008 7:28 pm
    Nikhil

    Thanks a lot for the information.

  20. February 12, 2008 9:22 pm
    Chris Dorn

    why would I always have multiple msexe.exe running in my Task Manager on my XP home edition? Whenever I want to install a new program or uninstall a program I get an error message that another install is in progress. I have to shut off all instances of the msexe.exe then quickly hit the run (install) before they start baack up..What is up with that? I had AVG. now switched to NortonAV and I have a Spyware detector and Registry cleaner and I still have the same problem. Any advice?
    Thank You!
    Chris
    Awesome explaination on the svchost.exe

  21. February 16, 2008 6:19 pm
    Pete

    Thanks, well explained info.

  22. February 17, 2008 4:02 am
    fran

    thank you for wour always excellent info, from Spain.

    I sugest one topic: how it works, and how to reduce the amount of memory that consumes “iexplore.exe” ( in my case 56.956 K)

    Thanks again

  23. February 18, 2008 4:02 am
    lester

    hi
    i am wondering if there is a guide on how to settle this problem for pc running on XP? thanks :)

  24. February 22, 2008 11:38 am
    Mary

    This was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.

  25. February 27, 2008 7:56 pm
    Gouse

    Good stuff……

  26. March 3, 2008 6:58 pm
    jen

    Thanks for the info! The only problem that I had (I’m not totally computer illiterate but I’m not a programmer), and this sounds stupid, but when you check the “show processes for all users box”, what do you do then? I clicked the box and then nothing happened, the box was just checked. Sorry if this is a dumb question.

  27. March 9, 2008 4:10 am
    Pavan Patidar

    Hey Guys really gr8 info about SVCHOST.EXE.
    Peter thanks for the link provided..

  28. March 11, 2008 5:29 am
    tv

    great job. Thanks a lot for the usefull and well-arranged informations.

  29. March 15, 2008 3:43 am
    Jordan

    Fantastic INFO! Thank you! :)

  30. March 18, 2008 9:56 pm
    Ravi Thapliyal

    Great Article Jon!!! You really made all of us to tacit “svchost.exe? in a very proficient mode.

  31. March 20, 2008 12:43 pm
    Dennis

    I have XP Home and tasklist /svc gives a message “‘tasklist’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
    operable program or batch file.”.

  32. March 22, 2008 9:40 pm
    Audi

    I had a few of svchost.exe running under user “SYSTEM”. But then i had 2 svchost.exe running under my user name which is audi, i knew this was something else because its under my user name and not under the system’s and in additional i was trying to find the source of web blocking program whiched blocked me from entering some web sites such as youtube.com, it even blocked me off from using firefox and not to mention disabling the function to see hidden files.. So i searched for svchost.exe using the search tool in the “start”, and i find its location here: C:\Documents and Settings\Audi\Local Settings\Temp\MicrosoftPowerPoint.
    it mention something like “autohotkey” and its icon is a “H” letter in a green box.
    This confirms me that its some kinda bug. I’ve erased it completely, but it still shows up everytime i turn on my pc, tryied tracing it again and showed no results. Its useless trying to use anti-spyware/addware or even an anti virus. Its a bug in disguise under the name of svchost.exe to prevent detection. So how can i get this program/thing off my pc for good? any idea people? tq.

  33. March 25, 2008 6:13 pm
    jordy la forge

    I don’t have any svchosts running, I think its stopping my “windows update” from working.

  34. April 8, 2008 9:41 pm
    Tannis

    Amazing! I have 13 svchost programs running at the moment. I know that some viruses pretend to be svchost, but I didn’t know how to check what each of the svchost programs were doing. You have helped me a lot. Thanks!

  35. April 10, 2008 6:05 pm
    JUSTIN

    thanks to whoever wrote this article… it helped me gain a lot of info bout svchost…. i thought it was a virus…

  36. April 11, 2008 4:19 am
    Deyaa Addeen Fahmy

    How can I thank you ?
    God bless you.

  37. April 24, 2008 1:26 am
    Andrew Seaton

    Great, well written article – Thanks!

  38. April 24, 2008 6:50 pm
    ty chan

    the explanation is so critically important. Millions of thanks!

  39. April 25, 2008 5:53 am
    French Rose in Italy

    svchost essential for Windows. Had the 100% CPU problem after having unintentionally left my firewall off. Fixed the whole problem by 1) activating Firewall, running full virus scan 2) cleaning out all unecessary files, 3) download Windows Service Pack 2, KB 884020, Windows Security update for XP KB941644, and Windows Defender, 4) ran a scan with Windows Defender, 5) wiping hard drive with Ace Utilities (other programs do this), 6) Dowloaded CCleaner from CCleaner.com (free software), 7) and then defrag. CPU is normal. Tip turn off realtime for Windows Defender and run scan once a week

  40. April 30, 2008 4:21 pm
    KO

    Thanks to you and now thanks to HP. That’s some good geeking!

    KO

  41. April 30, 2008 7:58 pm
    Adi

    Great article. Thanks!

  42. May 3, 2008 7:45 pm
    Eddie

    So thats what it is!!! Sweet!! Thanks for the info!!

  43. May 7, 2008 9:44 am
    Mac Grey

    Excellent description — thanks! I had been killing off one of these that was hogging the CPU — and feeling that I was “living dangerously”. Now I can go back and find out what is actually happening behind the scenes.

  44. May 8, 2008 1:22 pm
    huw rees

    Yep brilliant sorts it all out for me! thanks mate

  45. May 9, 2008 5:00 pm
    RonCam

    @diya
    What command are we supposed to enter in win2k?
    @Pavan
    And how do I go ahead doing this for non vista and non XP systems?

    tasklist /SVC is tlist -s in Windows 2000 Pro. You already have it in the support folder on your Windows 2000 disc. For more information,

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/250320

    For help, tlist /? works as expected. I extracted tlist.exe to \WINNT\system32.

    Will leave it to The Geek to tell us if it’s completely identical in function, or just very close …

  46. May 15, 2008 11:35 pm
    Badger

    Brilliant – thank you.

    You should write manuals for Microsoft !

    B

  47. May 16, 2008 6:40 am
    Brady

    I’m still having a bit of trouble, What do you do if you don’t have the ability to look at the services list, and right-clicking doesn’t bring up the same capabilities?

  48. May 16, 2008 7:04 am
    RonCam

    @Brady

    You would have to tell us, first, what operating system are you using?

  49. May 24, 2008 2:43 am
    Dreams

    Clear and concise…great job The Geek! Finally an article in English (not it Cryptic) about this…

  50. May 24, 2008 4:09 pm
    Vikram

    That was a real help man. thanx

  51. May 28, 2008 1:34 am
    BASSEM

    awesome article
    Godbless u :P

  52. June 5, 2008 4:24 am
    yatin

    You guys r rocking. Once again geek’s team has prooved that each one of you is making sure to raise computer literacy across the world by providing such an informative article. Keep up the good work

  53. June 8, 2008 1:16 pm
    Bill Snow

    On Jan 25th this was posted:
    Peter
    Thank you so much for this awesome guide. Really very useful.

    I would like to add one thing! If the service name is “scvhost.exe” then its a virus. Also if Username of “svchost.exe” service entry is other than “System”, “Local Service” and “Network Service”, then its a virus.

    I’ll wait for your service guide.

    My comment:
    Is any of the above correct?

  54. June 8, 2008 1:20 pm
    The Geek

    @Bill Snow

    Often viruses and spyware will disguise themselves as legitimate services by either using the same name, or similar names with spelling errors. You should run a scan to be sure.

  55. June 8, 2008 2:34 pm
    Bill Snow

    Thanks for the quick response. I have run several spy ware and virus scans that show none but I have svchost.exe that run at startup as well as random times during the day that essentially prevent me from working.

    Can you give me instructions as to how to find out what these are doing and who started them. It has been suggested that they may be a Trojan or spy ware or worse. Some use Hugh memory and 100% CPU for 3 to 10 minutes. others run for hours.

  56. June 12, 2008 9:00 am
    Agnes F.

    Bill Snow:

    Try using Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware program. It is recommended by C|Net and free. It cleaned up quite a bit on my computer. My son had accidently downloaded the Trojan.Vundo.

  57. June 13, 2008 3:15 pm
    SHEENA

    I just want to say thanks for having this sight! I have printed out what the instructions for what I needed and it is truly easy to understand. Just want to say THANK YOU. Nothing in life is free when they advertise it on line, but yours is free and more helpfull without wanting more of my money. THANKS GOD BLESS

  58. June 14, 2008 9:01 am
    abby

    Thanks for the info!

  59. June 15, 2008 5:37 am
    Billco

    Great advice Geek. I bet most of us at some time or another have wondered what these processes are,

    It’s great to have advice in plain english

    You should write a book I’d but it.

  60. June 15, 2008 10:03 pm
    Bz Bn ME

    Thanks for the info…there’s alot of misinformation out there on the scvhost.exe issue
    Hey Geek … Do you have any resources you could recommend to understand which systems are mandatory and which ones are optional?

    Thanks for your time

  61. June 16, 2008 1:59 pm
    Dimple

    I’ve just installed some security software, scvhost keeps coming up and requesting I block it, is this normal? Does it cause a problem if I click yes to block? I’m no way technical – so I haven’t a clue, I only installed it to search for spyware – is this part of it??

  62. June 17, 2008 1:21 am
    edjay

    Mindboggling. Great stuff: Will make the beginner think they might actually understand some of it one day! :)

  63. July 1, 2008 6:16 pm
    aris

    Thanks bro, it is vey useful informatin for me

  64. July 2, 2008 8:26 am
    Jen

    Thanks for a great explanation. svchost mystery finally explained!

  65. July 3, 2008 10:35 pm
    Invisible Bond

    Thank you

  66. July 7, 2008 7:15 am
    sendoh

    I’m really impressed. Even though I knew about these stuff before, I never expect someone to demonstrate the whole process with us end-users in mind. Many thanks!

  67. July 8, 2008 11:27 am
    niki

    very clear & concise explaination of svchost.exe … I have reduced mine down to 3 in Windows XP PRO and thanks to this article I know which services these 3 svchosts are running, thanks!

  68. July 10, 2008 5:40 am
    Shalabh

    Too good explaination.
    I was wondering for so long and now i know the answer.

  69. July 11, 2008 3:12 am
    Monish Sankar

    Thanks for such a great explanation. The way you explain is really great.

  70. July 11, 2008 11:32 am
    Steven

    Windows offers “tons” of services, many of which the average user doesn’t
    need. What services can safely be disabled and not inhibit the PC from
    functioning for basic usage and internet connectivity? Is there a better description of what each service performs beyond what Windows provides?

  71. July 16, 2008 10:58 am
    andrewwg94

    that helps a lot. do you recommend any specific services to shut down?

  72. July 16, 2008 5:35 pm
    Patrick

    Timely info (since one instance of svchost was using 99% of CPU).
    Am running Windows XP SP2 and do not see the “Services” tab on
    Task Manager. Instead, will install Process Explorer use it the
    next time svchost starts hogging CPU. Many, Many Thanks for this!

  73. July 17, 2008 10:32 am
    Ricardo

    Excellent explanation! I too was curious about the multiple instances running when my AutoCAD application stopped running.

  74. July 19, 2008 10:48 am
    paramveer singh

    thumbs up!!
    it helped me :)

  75. July 19, 2008 1:57 pm
    Lolly

    thank you for making that tech talk simple for us lowly computer uses.

    this instructions are very simple, easy to understand.

    the only problem is that my task manager does not have the same tabs as the example.
    my system does not have the services tab. HELP!!!!!!

    as we say in hawaii, MAHALO (THANK YOU)!!

  76. July 19, 2008 3:04 pm
    james_k

    Don’t disable services using Task Manager,

    In VISTA click the start button, type “services.msc” in the search box without quotes, and hit enter, this opens the services window.

    In XP click the start button, click the run button, type “services.msc” in the run box without quotes, and hit enter, does the same thing.

    In the services window double click on the service you want to enable or disable, and you better know what your doing because you can make Windows un-bootable if you disable the wrong service!

  77. July 21, 2008 8:59 am
    Jalajel

    Wow, that’s lots of super helpful info,

    thanks a lot :D

  78. July 21, 2008 10:43 am
    Hammad

    i always wondered what are those processes and today i know what are they
    thanks alot :) i sometimes thought of terminating those processes but….couldnt do it….

  79. July 22, 2008 2:22 am
    Shahzad Shaikh

    Very informative. Thank you for all that you do

  80. August 3, 2008 10:32 am
    Scootergrisen

    thanks for a good explanation ;)

  81. August 5, 2008 5:49 pm
    r

    Thanks so much for the write-up. It tipped me off to use Process Explorer utility and troubleshoot HP’s printer service which was hogging 50% of my cpu performance. Now the temperature of my laptop is dropping, the fan is getting quieter and the constricted blood vessels in my head are starting to release… ahhhhh

  82. August 7, 2008 11:17 am
    Neal

    Excellent information – thank you very much.

  83. August 8, 2008 8:37 pm
    Brisbane Internet Consultant

    Thanks, I always wondered about that. The confusing thing is that there can be multiple copies running at the same time. Now I understand why.

  84. August 9, 2008 9:43 pm
    Prof

    This was a remarkably clear and concise description. Well done

  85. August 13, 2008 9:55 am
    Chris

    I don’t often leave comments, but your explanation went a long way in explaining this to me. Thanks a lot!!

  86. August 13, 2008 2:52 pm
    Bob

    How can I tell what services too end? I dont want to end one thats imprtant.

  87. August 14, 2008 2:21 am
    Harshavardhan Patil

    fantastic, i was always wondering about svchosts.Now i m cleared.

    !!thanx!!

  88. August 17, 2008 11:54 am
    craig smith

    Thanks this helped me alot. My cpu was pegged at 99% thanks to this I was able to identify it and shut it down.

  89. August 24, 2008 1:36 pm
    Aphobos

    Very helpful article! I’m often mystified by the things I see in the Task Manager — including the ever-present svchost entries. This article not only explained the svchost process; it provided additional resources (both GUI and CLI) that greatly aid in understanding what my PC is doing under the hood. Thank you so much for the great info! (And keep writing!!)

    Sincerely,

    Aphobos

  90. August 24, 2008 4:44 pm
    becky

    I hope this helps those that have a different OS but to see the services tab and all running you can go to start menu, click on run and type msconfig and there you can make changes and see everything this topic is about..

  91. August 25, 2008 6:02 pm
    KamakaZ

    Done well, thanks for the article!

  92. August 26, 2008 7:08 am
    Laxman

    One of the most impressive articles I have ever come across.

    Thanks a million.

  93. August 26, 2008 7:28 am
    Liam

    Great article, helps a lot. Can anyone tell me why when I boot up one of my Svchost.exe files is using around 95% of my CPU?

  94. August 26, 2008 9:33 pm
    david

    I have a gateway mx3417. I started to use T mobile gc89 air card with a duel-systemsadapters The system was slow. windows would time out often then warning screen would appear. and basicalllly crash the laptop. I have origional recovery disk. I want to reformat entire hard drive. and start from fresh but it wont work

  95. August 27, 2008 2:34 pm
    Eric

    Well done. This was a lot of help for me as far as a starting point. Keep up the good work.

  96. August 27, 2008 3:41 pm
    William Snow

    Liam,

    Go to http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/what-is-svchostexe-and-why-is-it-running/ and read the whole section and then download “Process Explorer”. Process explorer will show you which Srvhost is doing the hogging Then mousing over that process will reveal what it it running.

  97. September 3, 2008 8:32 am
    Carl

    Good explanation on the details, really helped us a lot! :)

  98. September 4, 2008 2:49 am
    Vins

    Really very nice article.. please provide exact doc for xp.

  99. September 4, 2008 5:31 am
    Bin

    OMG i finally understand why they run now.. i got so worried because they used up banwidth that i was about to terminate them with out knowing what they do..FEW…u saved me ;)

  100. September 5, 2008 12:44 pm
    C_ma

    Thankyou soo much…. I was wondering abt this svchost.exe and now I got the right answer. I saw that my bandwidth is being used for something else and just googled and found your site… it is really useful yaar…
    Thanks

  101. September 7, 2008 8:37 am
    Bigpig

    Thanks a lot to your mother who have given birth you, intellignet one!!

  102. September 7, 2008 10:36 am
    melanie

    really, thanks for making things clear and for providing a very helpful explanation. now i will not have to ahh mmmm ?????? when somebody asks me about it. :)

  103. September 9, 2008 12:33 am
    NaYa

    very good explanation, thnk you!!!

  104. September 11, 2008 10:45 am
    Captain

    Thanks a lot for your help.
    With your help I managed to cancel the service that used over 80% of my CPU for the past few weeks.

  105. September 12, 2008 9:28 pm
    rdsnet2k

    Why disable this and that in Windows, isn’t “excessive disabling of processes” another name for not being able to afford sufficient resources (RAM, CPU, HDD, etc.) to run this O/S? Windows is how it is – period! I understand a lot of users are mad and misguided about the way Microsoft develops software but let’s face it…you all want it. Yeah it’s designed for more than what you’ll probably need but I call that forward thinking. Better to be safe than sorry, especially for those who are not technically inclined. And for those who are…switch to an open source O/S and quit complaining; also, stop trying to force Microsoft to be what YOU think it should be. Why don’t you buy a MAC if you want bare basic stability? I’m no Microsoft groupie or fan-boy but let’s grow up a little here.

  106. September 13, 2008 7:41 am
    Angela

    Thank you so much for making it so clear!

  107. September 14, 2008 4:52 am
    bavwill

    Cheers man! Great stuff!

  108. September 15, 2008 11:21 am
    haris

    nice find…………… thanks

  109. September 17, 2008 7:11 pm
    Blaav

    Hi, How-to Geek;
    You did an OUTSTANDING job explaining the process…!!!
    Keep up the good work.
    Cheers…

  110. September 21, 2008 12:15 pm
    LK

    Fantastic article. I always saw svchost.exe and knew it was related to DLLs but never knew about Windows’ “Go to Service(s)” feature. Thanks for the great info!

  111. September 22, 2008 9:37 pm
    Neb

    Thanks for clearing this up for me. Although, I have an antivirus/Firewall program called ZoneAlarm. I get alerts to let SvcHost.exe connect to the indernet, i say yes and a “Red Zone” alert comes up asking me to alowa program that may track what i do on my computer or Track my keystorkes?

    are all SVChost things good?

  112. September 23, 2008 10:44 am
    jd2066

    @Neb: Yes assuming it’s C:\Windows\system32\svchost.exe. Some malware tries to fake it putting one in C:\Windows or elsewhere.

  113. September 26, 2008 11:16 am
    Dr Udoh

    This is an excellent explanation. Good Job.

  114. September 30, 2008 12:05 am
    Alan

    You the man (or woman)! I have been soooooo interrupted by 100% takeovers of my system resources. And I have been totally ineffectual in turning off various processes from my task manager. Will go the next step from you and the black viper to figure out what is hogging the chipset.

    You know, I hate to say this, but I tend to agree with the writer who said this is Windows. If we don’t like it, maybe it’s time to go Mac. (This is a hard thing for me. Been with Dos since the most early 80′s.)

  115. October 2, 2008 10:56 pm
    Toxa

    Great Info, dude, like seriously. Nice of you to put this together! Thanks like a whole bunch!

  116. October 12, 2008 10:00 am
    pos

    Wait till I tell all my friends about this. I’m gonna sound smart. Thanks for the article!

  117. October 15, 2008 6:11 am
    Arnav

    You solved my problem I has having a difficulty

  118. October 16, 2008 9:41 am
    ian

    I’ve noticed that installed programs may use svchost.exe to run. This causes a problem when setting rules in a firewall to block programs from the internet but still allow the program to run.

    Maybe I’m missing something here but when my firewall pops up asking me to allow svchost.exe because I just opened adobe reader or some other program how am I supposed to block adobe from updateing or connecting to the internet whithout blocking svchost.exe.

    Windows should not be trying to establish a connection to the internet anyway unless I tell it to. I think this has some to do with the problems MS has with anti-trust laws in other countries but we just let them do what they want here in the land of the free.

  119. October 17, 2008 11:46 pm
    Gary

    Checked out Black viper, answered a lot of questions but why oh why such eye demanding colours on their website it really hurt to look at for more than a few minutes at a tme

  120. October 21, 2008 6:38 am
    Tim

    On the Black Viper website you can choose what color you see when you view the wedpage. Look at the top left corner of the main page, there is an option to view the site in black or white. Also, if you look in the “Notes for a Happier Computer and User” section the last item has a link to a page telling you how to change the view settings in your browser to change the look of the website.

  121. October 21, 2008 11:25 am
    CaptRon

    Somehow I still have an uncomfortable feeling. My puter got into a loop; it would restart, then once windows came up then I got the “Dos Type” window with “svchost” in the title bar and nothing inside of the cell. Then it restarts (on it’s own) and goes through the same process, over and over and over.

  122. October 21, 2008 1:48 pm
    jd2066

    @CaptRon: That is not normal. Either your svchost got messed up or you have some malware that is pretending to be svchost.
    If you post your issue on the forums we can try to help you figure out what the problem is.

  123. October 27, 2008 11:13 am
    BILL

    Kaspersky gave me this: Running process C:\windows\system32\svchost.exe: detected modification of riskware ‘Mass-mailer software’.

    System is super slow. Ran Malware Bytes but couldn’t get it. Pushing the Kaspersky definition updater right now. Any ideas? Or has anyone seen this problem before??

  124. October 28, 2008 10:39 am
    trish

    How do I know if one of these is my employer monitoring me?
    the user name on svchost.exe shows up numerous times with a user name as myself, one for SYSTEM, one says LOCAL SERVICE, one is NETWORK SERVICE, is there a way to determine if I am being monitored? Thanks

  125. November 6, 2008 5:32 am
    RJEASY

    Thanks for this info. as it was really helpful in deciding how to fix a svchost.exe that was utilizing all of my memory and growing fast.

  126. November 9, 2008 8:58 pm
    KollisSai

    Thanks for the info. I do a have question in my mind. I do not have a Services tab in the Task Manager. How can I map svchost.exe to the services running on my mac using the command prompt? There are many SVChosts running in the tasklist. Local Service and Network service are the two other User Names that are displayed in the TaskManager>Processes. I do understand the Network Service. What is Local Sevrice? Does that mean I am monitored or is it any SVChost launched by any hacker to access password and other sensitive information? Please let me know.

  127. November 12, 2008 3:51 am
    Karen

    I would like to thank you for taking the time to convey this information in terms that were CLEAR and EASY to understand! To say that you were helpful would be an understatement. THANK YOU:)

  128. November 12, 2008 11:18 am
    Dennis

    Thanks for the well written explaination

  129. November 13, 2008 12:47 pm
    p@r@noid

    Thanx for the info man !!

    It’s useful!!

  130. November 17, 2008 11:51 am
    Mahesh

    Excellent article. Simple and very clearly articulated. It clarified my doubts I had on svchost process. Thanks for posting this.

  131. November 19, 2008 1:16 pm
    Brock

    Thanks! I had a vague idea what svchost was, but this helped. And I’m really glad to learn how you can tell what services are running under it.

    I just found your website through Lifehacker, and I’ve already bookmarked it.

  132. November 24, 2008 6:44 am
    Evelyn

    My Norton has identified a Low Risk Program Alert in that “A remote system is attempting to access svchost on your computer. This program has been modified since it was last used.”

    It shows the path as C:\WINDOWS\system32\ and asks me what I want to do?
    Always allow (recommended),
    Allow this instance,
    block whis instance,
    block always or
    manually create a firewall rule.

    How can I tell if this is a legitimate svchost addition or a masquereding virus? Thanks.

  133. November 24, 2008 9:21 pm
    Nathan

    Thank you Very much for that information

    Just like the hundreds out there I ALWAYS WONDERED THAT

  134. November 26, 2008 10:10 pm
    Zack

    Thanks, my computer was running approximately 21 svchost.exe’s and thanks to you I trimmed it down to 6. Thank you again :)

  135. December 3, 2008 1:13 am
    Nick

    This is great just what I needed to help me out.

  136. December 7, 2008 12:58 am
    Hassan

    Thanks it works.

  137. December 8, 2008 5:53 pm
    Spyromojo

    Awesome! Great explanation of how to view and disable services. This is the first time I’ve ever seen this site and I became a member because of this post. I will be spending a lot of time here. = )

  138. December 18, 2008 7:28 am
    serjey

    thank you so much, i didn’t know what they were and tried having a battle with it, by closing them… my comp kept slowing down…

  139. December 18, 2008 10:09 am
    Brian

    Who is the author of this????? He/she is great!!!!! That excellent article… easilly excellent…..

  140. December 26, 2008 10:56 am
    Ihatebloatware

    Running XP Pro, but it won’t let me use the ‘Tasklist /SVC’ command – does it have to be run as Admin?

    Or it might be disabled, according to the error message……anyone know what service controls Tasklist on the cmd?

    (I did make my initial installation account = admin, but since then XP changed it to two different users…one of which lacks Admin rights. I’m going to go try the command as Admin but figured it might be useful to mention here that on XP Pro (SP2) it doesn’t work under a regular user, even if they have full rights.)

  141. January 9, 2009 2:02 pm
    Casey

    Great article. Very informative & helpful!

  142. January 9, 2009 8:16 pm
    Derek

    I have six svchosts running in my task manager, but they all seem to run from different locations. Three run under the username “System,” two under “Network Service,” and one under “Local Service.” Since svchost.exe has a history of being an uninvited guest to a masquerade party (i.e. a trojan), how can I know for sure these are all integral to my system? I use XP Home Edition.

  143. January 14, 2009 2:10 pm
    sawmaster

    I have six svchosts running in my task manager, but they all seem to run from different locations. Three run under the username “System,” two under “Network Service,” and one under “Local Service.” Since svchost.exe has a history of being an uninvited guest to a masquerade party (i.e. a trojan), how can I know for sure these are all integral to my system? I use XP Home Edition.

  144. January 14, 2009 3:10 pm
    jd2066

    @sawmaster: Those are not locations, they are hidden users that Windows creates for security purposes. SYSTEM has complete access to the computer, “Local Service” has less access to the system and no access to the network, “Network Service” is the same as “Local Service” but it has access to the network.
    Also you can be fairly sure you have a good svchost when the process path is C:\Windows\system32\svchost.exe. Trojans named svchost will be in different locations. Though will the usage of rootkits even that isn’t always true because rootkits can make programs like Task Manager not show the presence of the rootkit.
    As for services running under svchost that have security holes in them, your only option is to keep up with the latest news and updates on Microsoft security and security for any other programs you have installed.
    You can’t predict when a security hole will appear.

  145. January 14, 2009 6:11 pm
    Charge

    Right on! Been messin’ around with DVD burning software and have been checking taskman to see CPU usage and just thought I would have a go @ finding out what the SVCHOST was. Glad I looked. Bookmarked your site. Thank you

  146. January 26, 2009 3:18 am
    dushyant

    thanks a lot man, this was very helpful and above all, easy to understand for a
    non- IT person like me.

    keep it up.

  147. January 28, 2009 1:15 pm
    Sinan

    Thanks a lot man for the gr8 info you had intoduced for the svchost.exe.
    one more thing, i am using win XP system and i had Macafee AV installed in it, couple days ago the AV start showing messages of Virus Scan Alert and the detection type is “Buffer overflow” and the application is the “SVCHOST” any idea for this

    Thanks in advance

  148. February 2, 2009 4:41 pm
    Liverbird

    Excellent clear informative article … well done ;)

  149. February 9, 2009 2:04 am
    Trilok

    This is very good help.
    is there any way that i can know which ,exe has called which .exe or .dll.
    Thanks

  150. February 15, 2009 2:17 am
    aj

    i downloaded mathematica from utorrent but it would not open so i tried to download a ‘bin’ driver from ‘drivermax 4.7′. i think i may have allowed a one time change but when checking mcafee,although it says i am protected, it also has 21+ entries in 9 secs of a registry type.Process: c:\windows\system32\ie4uinit.exe,Description:IE per-user initialization utility. Then 2 more entries in the next second of a registry type.Process: c:\windows\system32\rundll.exe,Description:windows host process(rundll32). then 2 more in the next concerning c:\program files\synaptics\synTPEnh.exe. this was about 5 days ago. am i safe

  151. February 20, 2009 10:13 pm
    kevin wethington

    I called up the run screen and typed in tasklist /SVC and information came up on the command line screen but the command line screen only stayed open for about one second. Can you tell me how to keep it open long enough for me to read it? I do have Windows XP PRO.

  152. February 21, 2009 11:05 am
    Snowman

    Kevin,

    Start the Command Prompt from the program list or type “CMD” from the Run box. Then type your tasklist/SRV.

  153. February 23, 2009 7:46 am
    TC

    Wow – you really ought to write a book or something.. this is absolutely way out the best explanation on svchost.exe i have come across – and i’ve been looking through articles on the net for over 4 months – you’ve really put this together.. well done and THANKS.. i’m going to take time out to really look at your website – and I’ve just placed it in my hall of fame bookmarks! :)

  154. February 24, 2009 6:18 am
    ssonby

    Lovely Explanation.

    Keep up the good WORK!!!!!

  155. February 25, 2009 9:52 am
    TD

    Thanks for taking the time to explain and put this all together.

    Like Neb who posted above, I too have an Antivirus/Firewall program called ZoneAlarm. I get alerts to let SvcHost.exe connect to the Internet, but the start port address is 0.0.0.0.0.0., which concerns me. Do you think it’s safe to allow? I’ve been denying and so far and haven’t noticed any problems with any of my programs. I can’t figure out for the life of me which one of my legitimate programs is trying to access the Internet, if any. Even after selecting the deny box the same alert box pops up again asking wanting permission; except the port address has clanged. I think this is what allows it to get around the deny setting that I previously set. Sooner or later the deny setting sticks, but it eventually comes back in a couple of days and I go through this process again. Should I just keep doing this? AV and MS Defender have never found anything threating on my system or if they have it has been removed. or so I thought.

  156. March 6, 2009 1:42 am
    Navneet

    Hello,
    I have P IV machine with 3.00 ghz (pinless processor), MSi motherbaords with 512 mb DDR1 ram.

    Can I upgrade my ram in 2 gb DDR2

    Plz help me.
    Navneet

  157. March 11, 2009 7:40 am
    John Jenkins

    It’s a shame so many of us have to look this up. It shows what a poor design it is and the inherent problems experienced with Windows currently.

  158. March 13, 2009 7:28 am
    Abdur Rahim

    Hello!!

    I have AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 2600+
    1.60 GHz, 256 MB of Ram
    and windows sp-2, original anti virus Guardian (Quick heal product).

    Problem is: When I log on my computer so computer does open very slowly and very late after that when I open any program so still open very late……….why?
    As I know that my computer requirement too old.

  159. March 15, 2009 10:24 am
    anon

    Great thanks! Very helpful article!

  160. March 16, 2009 11:01 pm
    sarah

    arggghhh my cpu is at 100 i cant open internet explorer, windows updates, any files, copy and paste doesnt work, my background is missing, itunes is stuffed.

    none of these type in ‘run’ solutions have worked and my computer has lost all of its networks so wont connect to inet. any more ideas!!

  161. March 19, 2009 1:38 am
    vicky

    Dear all,

    By disabling the service, would that effect the performance of the CPU or server?

  162. March 22, 2009 7:42 am
    Mi

    Awesome explanation!!!
    Keep it up!

  163. March 23, 2009 2:16 am
    Praful

    Thanks dude. A very simplified explanation. Resolved a leak of internet usage on my home comp. And thanks for some of the links provided too.

  164. March 29, 2009 1:31 pm
    oops

    yeah really nice explanation on svchost…

    thnx to people who did effort for this

  165. April 6, 2009 12:49 am
    AliAkbar

    Thanks alot for the excellent explanition of svhost.
    i know it now. b4 i dont know it.

  166. April 12, 2009 8:02 am
    ProStuffHacker

    Thanx 4 the explanation.U r true GEEKS! B proud of it :P.

  167. April 12, 2009 4:24 pm
    John A Thomson

    Superb blog post. Keep up the good work.

  168. April 14, 2009 6:41 am
    Jesus

    Thanks for the information, I like it, Very Much.

  169. April 20, 2009 12:05 am
    Axel

    Great enlightenment. That was really HELPFULL. Finally I got my proper answer and learn a lot of’bout it. Thank You!

  170. April 23, 2009 12:58 am
    jummajeed

    Thanks a lot! Very well explained and easy to understand. Was looking for just this!

  171. April 23, 2009 4:50 am
    Angelo Quaglia

    Many thanks for this extremely useful article.

  172. April 23, 2009 7:14 pm
    iMommy

    This was awesome — thank you!

  173. April 23, 2009 11:59 pm
    Al

    Thanks Dude … I was wondering if this is what was causing my computer to run sooooo sloooowww … but it seems that it is simply that piece of crap called vista.

  174. April 25, 2009 12:26 am
    Henny

    Hello Geek

    There is little for me left to say after the many positive reactions before me. Btw..I share them all.
    I work as volunteer for the elderly.
    Know this! Through me…[and probably also many others :)] You are helping a lot of seniors who try to learn and use computers in the region where I live in Holland. Thank you for that.

    Sincerely
    Henny

  175. April 25, 2009 2:17 am
    Keith

    All of the information has been available BUT so disjointed and complex that very few could decifer it. You have put it clearly in terms that almost anyone can understand and use. Truly a work of art – thanks very much. Ahemm, ever thought of rewritng some of MS’s help articles :).

  176. April 25, 2009 4:25 am
    John

    Thanks for the info. it’s very helpfull
    You mentioned a guide for process, will I be able to get one? if so how and when?
    Thanks again

    John

  177. April 25, 2009 5:02 am
    bergie

    I don’t regard myself as a “geek” but I am a interested party trying to work out whats going on. Just a comment, I think it’s irresponsible to just say “Find the service in the list that you would like to disable”

    How many people know what each of those services do and whether if we disable a service what affect it would have on our systems? Is there somewhere, where we can find out what each service does?

    Thanks for trying to help.

  178. April 25, 2009 12:04 pm
    Nancy

    I agree with bergie (although I’m not sure I’d say it’s irresponsible). How DO we people who are not extremely knowledgeable about computers know if we disable something it won’t adversely impact other processes or if we can even enable it again? It really would be nice to know what would happen to our computer whenever any one or combination of proceses was disabled before we took this action (specifically, what things “only an expert” should fool with and people like us should NEVER touch). Thanks for any answers.

  179. April 25, 2009 3:41 pm
    Snowman

    To find what you want go to the top of this page then scroll through the description until you get to the “Comments”. Just above under “Similar Articles ” look for “Svchost Viewer Shows Exactly What Each svchost.exe Instance is Doing”. This will let you see a description of what each process is and may help you to make a decision of what to do.

  180. April 26, 2009 12:01 am
    Bilal

    Thanx a lot for explaining wht these processes are……without this i couldnt sort out these probs in my life…..

  181. April 26, 2009 12:52 am
    raghdip

    thanks bro.. g8 wrk

  182. April 27, 2009 8:44 am
    kurnt

    maybe next time just dont forget that you are explaining relevant stuffs to a non-geek community and you will be fine. Besides if they were geeks they will probably no these stuffs, wont they?

  183. April 27, 2009 9:47 am
    CarlK

    * HISTORY * helps.
    Before ~Winnt5/2000 Rundll32.exe was the interfacing “host” for .dlls.
    Then it used mmc.exe. Again Micro$oftMgtConsole was the interfacing “host” for .dlls
    Now I knew XP SVCHOST.exe did this.

    What I did not know before Technet’s Russinovich was that ProcExp.exe & HowToGeek were so excellent! Thank you for tightening up my loose understanding!

    CarlK, Columbus OH

  184. April 28, 2009 1:40 pm
    keeley

    Hi
    I agree with some of the others above – I’m pretty PC savvy but not teccie enough to really work out what I can and mustn’t stop running.

    I also have only one instance of svchost.exe running when I turn on my PC but it slows everything to a halt. Double clicking on it does not show me anything…

    (Using XP home edition)

  185. April 29, 2009 12:56 am
    Carlo

    Process Explorer is a very powerful tool to know how svchost works. Definitely a must to have!

  186. April 29, 2009 8:41 pm
    MMAVu

    cool. i’ve always wondered if i could disable some xp programs from starting automatically. thanks!

  187. April 30, 2009 9:30 pm
    Art Fox

    Looks like it’s the info I need!.
    But I do have a questions before I try all the above.
    I have a PC, with Windows XP Service Pak 3. I am getting both the windox box that says there is a problem with schost.exe. Also when I boot up I get a boot failure, system halted. And the only way I can get around the latter, is to do a sofft boot. Are these two things related. Or if not what can I do about the boot failure situation. Thanks for any help

  188. April 30, 2009 11:55 pm
    Ankit

    Excellent Information…..

  189. May 1, 2009 3:45 am
    kunna

    good info..

    thanks for “tasklist /SVC”

  190. May 4, 2009 12:15 pm
    UMEDmedia.com

    This was a huge help …
    Thanks, you explained it very well…

    umedmedia.com

  191. May 5, 2009 5:14 am
    Schweppo

    so many people commented on this article.. but I want to say THX as well! (:

  192. May 7, 2009 5:21 pm
    Warren

    Yes I justed needed someone to put it in a simple way. Good Stuff

  193. May 11, 2009 7:04 pm
    Boogers

    Thanks Geek!

    Geez, I was burning up too much calories just to find out what on earth is that SVCHOST.EXE all about,
    then The Geek easily cracked this one for me.

    Nice one, Thank You and More Power!

  194. May 13, 2009 1:04 am
    imam suyudi

    Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank you sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much!

  195. May 13, 2009 10:38 pm
    AB

    Thanks a ton. Useful information explained in simple terms.

  196. May 14, 2009 9:54 pm
    Jair Crawford

    How do you get the ‘Services’ tab in the task manager? My task manager doesn’t seem to have one. Is it because I’m running XP: Home?

  197. May 15, 2009 7:43 pm
    sundeep

    Thanx a lot for educating on a essential matter what every PC user must know.I am looking for this much clarity from 4 years feeling unrest.

  198. May 16, 2009 1:32 pm
    Steven

    I had a question about this program, it seems every time i start up my computer it now takes an additional 2 minutes about in the startup screen, and when it does finally start it says C:\WINDOWS\svchost.exe can not be found, or does not exist. I think maybe one of my siblings accidentally deleted it, do you know how i could go about getting this program back on my computer? or just solving the problem in general?

  199. May 17, 2009 2:13 pm
    Violet

    I have a problem starting up also (Windows XP) Get a few error messages and then it closes down!
    1 message is svchost.exe – Application Error ‘The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000142). Click on OK to terminate the application.
    Not sure what to do due to the problems, please help……

  200. May 19, 2009 1:20 pm
    Suckerpunch

    Svchost can also be a target of a host of viruses, intrusion software can embed itself into a form of dll or alter an existing one when you reboot your machine then things get ugly. Such viruses auto launch because all there really is is a single exe telling what dll when to run, the moment the dll is run the dormant virus hijacks your system.

    This is why anti virus is crucial people,
    Enjoy :)

    (Avast is a good one!!)

  201. May 20, 2009 4:02 pm
    Stanley

    There isn’t a tasklist command available – could you please explain that ?

  202. May 21, 2009 3:56 pm
    suresh

    Dear Geek

    Excellent explanation. Congrats and Thank you !

  203. May 22, 2009 6:16 pm
    Chris

    Can’t imagine a better article and explaination…Thank you!!!

  204. May 24, 2009 6:31 pm
    Sundeep

    I want to connect 3 monitors (alongwith keyboards and mice) to my CPU(1.5 GB RAM,160 GB HD,Ccre2 Duo Processor) so as to each one of my kids can work at a time, Could yoy please explain the way?

  205. May 25, 2009 5:20 am
    Jupiter

    You might not bothered to read this at all but just wana extend my gratitude..thanks for the effort…more powers….

  206. May 25, 2009 9:57 pm
    Rajiv Sharma

    Its a great information.

  207. May 26, 2009 5:43 pm
    matty

    @ Sundeep,
    You are best advised to go to a good computer store and get advice from a technical person – Oh ya, its best to ask in more than one store, as the stores would always try and sell you ‘their best product’, which usually costs a lot of money.

    @Geek,
    Thank you for providing great answers to ‘burning’ questions ;-)
    I’m running XP pro SP2, how can I get the ‘Sysinternals’ there? I mean I ALWAYS check my services and make sure nothing runs without me wanting it to. I’ve only 5 instances of svchost running on my box – I think thats pretty good, though I feel that I could do without one or two instances.

    Here are the instances:
    svchost.exe 768 DcomLaunch, TermService
    svchost.exe 836 RpcSs
    svchost.exe 876 AudioSrv, Browser, CryptSvc, Dhcp, dmserver,
    ERSvc, EventSystem, helpsvc, lanmanserver,
    lanmanworkstation, Netman, Nla, Schedule,
    seclogon, SENS, SharedAccess,
    ShellHWDetection, Themes, TrkWks, W32Time,
    winmgmt, wscsvc, WZCSVC
    svchost.exe 932 Dnscache
    svchost.exe 960 Alerter, LmHosts, SSDPSRV, WebClient

    I’m particularly interested in instance ID 836 (RpcSs).
    Any thought? Thank you for your help.
    Regards,
    Mat

  208. May 29, 2009 3:13 am
    Anu

    This was definitely of great help and thanks for keeping it simple and understandable! :)

  209. June 1, 2009 9:31 am
    Kaleem

    Thanks a lot, was really really helpful for me

  210. June 2, 2009 4:38 am
    IshKapila

    Good Article ,

    How can we submit our own article related to other processes in this section.

    Thanks
    IK.

  211. June 5, 2009 3:20 am
    sarath

    good work its very helpful for me……

  212. June 5, 2009 9:43 am
    Pana

    Very useful article, and very good explanation !!

  213. June 11, 2009 5:15 am
    Phoebe

    ahh I don’t have Vista. this makes me want it.

  214. June 13, 2009 2:38 am
    Tejinder

    Very good explanation.

  215. June 13, 2009 4:13 pm
    Jameel Alayyan

    This is Interesting

  216. June 16, 2009 4:57 pm
    Juba

    great article. This information saved me a lot of time
    Thanks

    Juba

  217. June 19, 2009 10:34 am
    Ashwin

    when the system starts there is a error shown SCVHOST.EXE not found .
    please suggest me whether it is a virus attack or anything else and give me a solution.

  218. June 19, 2009 10:12 pm
    waikato66

    tyvm for the awesome, info!!!!! :)

  219. June 24, 2009 6:52 am
    Jasper

    Excellent article..

    Thanks for the clear explanation

  220. June 25, 2009 10:55 pm
    Sureshkumar MP

    Hi,

    It’s really very nice and useful information. Now i cleared my doubt about svchost.exe process. Thanks for your effort.

  221. June 26, 2009 3:10 am
    abhishek

    i performed the above action but i fear that disableing it may harm it in another ways or may stops some function please reply

  222. June 29, 2009 3:22 am
    uyuz

    thanks, it is very useful.

  223. June 30, 2009 3:09 pm
    Ruben

    I was wondering why when i type the tasklist /SVC it just gives me “tasklist is not recognized as an internal or external command. how do i get this to function on my computer?

  224. July 1, 2009 12:14 am
    Kim

    how do you recognize a virus that uses an svchost.exe as a front from a real windows process?

  225. July 2, 2009 1:19 am
    inkit

    nice information, in simple words.
    thats what i needed..
    thanks

  226. July 4, 2009 11:28 pm
    Raygun

    Like all the above…thanks for explaining this to me… I feel better seeing all those repeats now.

  227. July 14, 2009 12:53 am
    Machuku

    This is great, I now understand all the instances, i do hope no virus will resemble the process

  228. July 17, 2009 3:19 pm
    angel

    my computer ihave try so many anty virus ,and keep freezing some time and not responding,ihave to restart again and some time take 4 ever

  229. July 18, 2009 10:53 am
    Phyrehart

    Thanks so much for the information. I’ve been having things running in the background and I wondered what they were. When I found these I was kinda lost.. Not anymore.. :) thanks everyone

  230. July 18, 2009 1:32 pm
    chandrashekhar

    if svchost.exe not found
    {
    restart
    }
    if problem not solve
    download svchost.dll from net
    and follow it:
    full path regsvr32 svchost
    message will be dll successfully registered…………….juast apply…….
    id : chandrtech@rediff.com

  231. July 20, 2009 8:23 pm
    Kiran Kodati

    Its indeed a great article. I wondered many times why so many svchost.exe would be running even though I did not open any windows. geek.com did a good job putting this info all together, Great job dude!!

  232. July 22, 2009 5:14 am
    Richard Harrison

    At last a Geek that puts it in plain english for the rest of us. Excellent article. Thanks

  233. July 27, 2009 12:00 pm
    Valerie

    I appreciate this clear answer? Geek’s answer was right on the money. And I will go to viper to figure which processes I could rid.

  234. July 27, 2009 12:02 pm
    Valerie

    Thank you again from all of us and will also go to viper site to check which processes I can stop.

  235. July 30, 2009 6:40 am
    Denny

    One more thanks. It is incredible to me how extremely complex microsoft’s system have become.
    I know nothing about it except it seems there is just one complex of processes overlaid onto another
    and another seeming in an endless cycle. It is really great that you have put this info together so that
    a human might have some [ever be it so small] chance of figuring some of this out. That is what it is
    that their computer is doing in relation to what one might conceivably want their computer to do.

  236. August 5, 2009 9:22 am
    Pawan

    The task manager comes on and then goes off. It does not come on again. So how so I clean this process out?

  237. August 12, 2009 8:13 pm
    Lisa T.

    Thank you so much! That was extremely helpful and exactly what I was looking for to help me reduce the load on my physical memory. :)

  238. August 13, 2009 11:21 pm
    marcus

    Thanks for the infomation it was very helpfull, there is mention of a program named Black Viper for Vista is there one for XP. Keep up the good work I like the way you give the right and relavent info without trying to sell me some reg fix or other so called Apps. well done.I will remember this site for the future.

  239. August 16, 2009 4:42 am
    AhmédCo

    Merci very much !

  240. August 23, 2009 12:09 pm
    Cjreef

    Thank you very much for giving us your time and effort. You helped me decide how to handle the warning from my Bit Defender.

  241. August 23, 2009 8:33 pm
    sanat

    Thank you very much for useful info!

  242. August 24, 2009 7:44 am
    Ratheesh

    Well explained and thanks for the info on Process Explorer utility.

  243. August 25, 2009 5:01 am
    Will N

    thanks! i used to have to stop the svchost process but i investigated using process explorer and found out that 99% of the cpu was taken up by svc host – the source being a diagnostics and help program for my HP printer! make sure you install software correctly!

    many thanks,
    will

  244. September 8, 2009 8:07 am
    dann

    thanks! this is a quite useful and very good written article. I had some problems with an Excel hanging process, and then I saw those svchost.exe processes.

    Thanks for posting

  245. September 8, 2009 11:42 am
    Cameron

    Why is it so difficult to get help such as what is outlined in this help article? Microsoft needs to take some lessons. Thank you for taking the time and providing screen captures in your text.

    Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

  246. September 14, 2009 12:22 pm
    SHUBERT

    Very well described the meaning of svchost process in details. Appropriate and to the point. Thanks.

  247. September 14, 2009 2:07 pm
    User

    omfg ty for posting this ^_^

  248. September 17, 2009 6:51 pm
    Kiran

    Hey!!! Thank you so much for the explanation in Layman Terms. Good Initiative..!!

  249. September 24, 2009 1:52 pm
    Shahab khan

    Quite a great post..right from the basics!

  250. September 25, 2009 3:30 am
    HaNcH

    A lot of Thanks!!!

  251. September 25, 2009 11:12 am
    yoel

    thank you for the info, everyday i learn something……here is something interesting…..i had a problem with the internet connection (i think) each time the modem had no signal the monitor (acer 22″) would restart on its own….that was funny and strange to me….what do you think?
    thanks again and have a great day.

  252. September 25, 2009 11:20 am
    lam

    thanks a lot

    i wondered what is svchost ? and now , i understanded it :D

  253. September 27, 2009 7:58 am
    Frenkie

    Thanks a lot it helped to understand what is it

  254. September 28, 2009 9:46 am
    jim b

    I have a question on svchost: There are a number of them running (4-5), but one seems to be loaded up and when my system slows down that one is causing 100% cpu usage. (although iexplorer is just as big a culprit). Is there a way to redistribute the load amongst the various processes, or … what?

  255. October 1, 2009 3:23 am
    Xanthia

    Great article! Thanks…

  256. October 2, 2009 2:03 am
    shamik ray

    thank you.very easy to understand

  257. October 6, 2009 3:46 am
    Cath

    Why have I never found this site before? Thank you so much – this problem has been driving me mad for months.

  258. October 6, 2009 6:26 am
    akhil kumar

    wonderful……………….. explanation,thanks for that.I was searching for this data for a long time.

  259. October 6, 2009 8:56 pm
    JB

    I’m about the 300th person to thank you for this excellent explanation but it needs to be said! Thanks.

  260. October 9, 2009 11:05 am
    Jose Soares

    Thank you very much for this excellent information on svchost.exe. Very useful article, and very good.
    God Bless You all.
    Jose Soares Effort, PA

  261. October 10, 2009 12:15 pm
    Kamil

    Excellent Explanation !!!!!!!

  262. October 15, 2009 11:14 am
    Stud

    thank you very much :)

    i always like to know what programs are running behind the seens and i never knew that there are so many diferent services withing windows. i have some cleaning to do :(

  263. October 19, 2009 4:21 am
    thermistor

    have your heard about trojan that can infect svchost.exe?

  264. October 21, 2009 11:08 pm
    simon

    I am just trying to work through the Trojan in svchost – using AVG8.5, has detected numerous multidropper TD virus on my owrk computer XP. At home running McAfee and have just had BDC problems with Vista recovery – hoping trojan is not in there but heaps more svchost programs running than I recall.
    Any help/advice appreciated.
    Cheers

  265. October 23, 2009 9:07 pm
    sally

    I love you guys and all the knowledge that you ahve it blows me away!!
    and thanks for writing it all up to share…not that it means much to me.
    I have a question please;
    Can someone recommend a computer guy who can delete all the unecessary process ( I have 61 currently) that are running on my computer and make it run faster for me?? it has been going for 3 .5 yrs and is getting very slow.
    someone wtihin about 30 kms of North Sydney, NSW.
    thanks a mill

  266. October 24, 2009 11:10 am
    joe

    you lost me at the top of this page with the instructions under the heading “Checking From the Command Line (Vista or XP Pro)” – like many of these, it assumes you know how to find the “command prompt” which I do not. Thanks anyway but this is a frequent issue for us novices with help written by the experts

  267. October 26, 2009 6:01 am
    Jesse

    Thanks for the help. This cleared up much of the misinformation i received.

  268. October 28, 2009 11:42 am
    Nisar Kottayil

    Its Great!!Really nice!!
    Thank you so much for this knowledge information.

  269. October 29, 2009 11:05 pm
    billy

    Realy good mate, nice work.

  270. October 31, 2009 1:08 pm
    Obaid

    Thanks. its a great post and keep it up to provide more… Lovelly.

  271. November 7, 2009 11:22 am
    Naikado

    Wow! I never really understood what they were. I just tried to kill them and when they came back I just glared at the screen for a few seconds :P

  272. November 11, 2009 11:57 pm
    axee5

    Great information and link with good tool. Thanks

  273. November 12, 2009 9:13 am
    azhar

    what a great info that you give to us here.. thanx

  274. November 13, 2009 7:42 am
    Derique

    You’re the man… Thanks, great information and easy to understand.

  275. November 14, 2009 11:56 am
    Roy

    Really, nice explanation, I like your work.

  276. November 16, 2009 7:34 am
    erisha

    So far the best and understandable explanations I had.
    Please do not stop

  277. November 17, 2009 10:52 am
    Lisbei

    Do does that mean I need to download a specific utility to check in Win XP?

  278. November 21, 2009 6:39 am
    zach

    big thanks, it has helped a lot :)

  279. November 21, 2009 6:52 am
    Badri Narasimhan

    Excellent article. I was always wondering why there are so many of them. This explains very well. Thanks so much.

  280. November 26, 2009 1:10 am
    DURAI.T.C

    Ya i have learn about svchost ,thanks a lot.

  281. November 26, 2009 7:13 pm
    bert winters

    I get message host process for windows was closed down and then i cant get on the internet,i then have to close the computer and re start again and hope this message dont come up. what can i do about this?

  282. November 29, 2009 5:21 pm
    Sliocht Chreagáin

    Thanks for svchost.exe article. Amazing to find so many before me who had same query about it. Found article during long session trying to cut down cpu usage on Portege 300 which can now be very slow and sometimes just stops and refuses to move like a bold child, despite 1.25 gb ram etc. Probably still have to have it reformated but now know so much more than before.
    beir bua
    Sliocht Chreagáin

  283. December 1, 2009 11:50 pm
    Rajasekaran Moorthy

    Excellent information – thank you

  284. December 2, 2009 1:14 am
    Jobin Johny

    good.very useful

  285. December 2, 2009 11:30 am
    Salim Tyan

    excellent and very clear explanation. keep the good work. bravo.

  286. December 3, 2009 6:31 am
    chris

    avg says this is a trojan horse… dumb ass AVG not as bad a mcafee tho lol

  287. December 4, 2009 11:27 am
    chrisma

    THANK YOU for the information!
    very simple and clear! =D

  288. December 4, 2009 9:26 pm
    will

    i accidently downloaded a file that gave me a trojan called dopper.generic bhhp and it has infected my svchost and i cant find any information on it. How can I fix it?

  289. December 4, 2009 9:28 pm
    will

    im sorry it is called dropper.generic.bhhb

  290. December 6, 2009 3:44 am
    Clovis

    This article is still up to date !!
    I’ve learned a lot …
    Thank’s

  291. December 11, 2009 11:38 am
    lucky

    really its helpfull for many of the user,those who are intersted in os.thanq

  292. December 11, 2009 11:39 am
    pavan

    Really its helpfull for many of the user,those who are intersted in os.thanq vmuch…..

  293. December 13, 2009 12:33 pm
    Talon

    Well that’s not good.. It’s going to be hard to find this virus now.. A virus made its way on to my jump drive and put itself as a hidden file, I deleted it but it just recreated itself and I think it made its way on to my computer…

    It hides itself under the name svchost..

  294. December 14, 2009 1:33 am
    Rich

    Fantastic – Process Explorer is a revelation, thank you.

  295. December 16, 2009 8:29 am
    Carol

    Wow, where have I been for the past 2 years? What a great article. Thanks for answering some questions I’ve had for longer than that! Fantastic!

  296. December 19, 2009 2:22 am
    Sim

    Thanks a lot for this wonderful piece of information!
    Is there a guide to all the windows services?
    Thank you in advance.

  297. December 19, 2009 10:21 am
    Mallory

    This was so helpful! Thank you so much!

  298. December 21, 2009 10:55 am
    Ziyad Moghalis

    Thanks alot really thanks

  299. December 21, 2009 11:21 pm
    Pallavi

    Hey
    Awesome..
    but sometimes people report svchost.exe as virus too.. can u put some light on that?

  300. December 24, 2009 3:48 pm
    Bruce Walton

    I have Ubuntu and Windows XP running on my machine. When I shut down Ubuntu, it turns off my DSL line, and when Windows comes up, it doesn.t turn it back on. How can I stop Ubuntu from turning this off??
    BWW

  301. December 30, 2009 8:11 pm
    Norman Bloom

    Everytime I turn on my computer I get this pop up saying from Webroot SVCHOST.exe.
    Block Change or Allow and counts down a time period to respond.
    It is a nuissance and didin’t happen before.
    How do I get rid of this pop up?

  302. January 2, 2010 6:51 am
    Ashish

    Thanks for the great explanation.
    I used to believe that this was only a virus, but you guys busted my myths.
    Keep up the great work!!

  303. January 2, 2010 1:00 pm
    Jules

    Thank you so very much for putting that on a kindergarden level! Well done!

  304. January 5, 2010 1:48 am
    FireBlade

    The explaination is really superb

  305. January 8, 2010 8:44 am
    HBA

    Thanks for the info!
    I would like to add something:
    I noticed that certain malwares create a new svchost file (a contaminated file of course!) and copy it in other folders than in the original folder (windows/system32) by adding some entries in registry to make it starting with the other windows processes ex in the folder users/you account/AppData/Local/Microsoft.
    So never forget that the original file is ALWAYS in windows/system32 folder…
    Hope It Helps!

    HBA

  306. January 10, 2010 12:38 pm
    Gerald

    WOW, best explanation I have seen.

  307. January 10, 2010 10:36 pm
    Raj

    Great Article.
    All the minor details are covered!!!!!!!!!
    Kudos to you!!!!!!!!!!

  308. January 14, 2010 7:39 am
    chris

    I may have another easy solution. SVCHOST.exe drove me nuts for years, more than daily. I used to force stop it by right clicking on the program in the task manager. It worked but I would lose audio in my XP Home. Just recently, I TURNED OFF AUTOMATIC UPDATES for windows. I haven’t seen the problem occur now for four days and I no longer have to wait 90 minutes for my computer to simply switch a window.
    -chris

  309. January 16, 2010 12:12 am
    Anand MG

    The best explanation for SVChost & got more than wat I was looking for!!!

  310. January 16, 2010 10:34 am
    Peter

    Greetings from Canada, I struggled with Windows from ’98 to Vista, then I found Linux Mandriva boy, what a relief, it’s all so simple and no viruses or hacking. Try it, you’ll like it.

  311. January 17, 2010 2:18 am
    Arun

    Very good article. Thanks..

  312. January 26, 2010 2:31 pm
    JC

    This is the best website that has the best explanation ever. This is extremely easy to understand. Not like other websites where its all “high tech talk”

  313. February 1, 2010 5:31 am
    Shiner

    Wow! its jus a great explaination!

  314. February 9, 2010 1:07 am
    Rajesh MP

    Great article.Thanks a lot for the information

  315. February 12, 2010 4:36 am
    Anonymous

    Thanks for the help. I thought it was a virus.

  316. February 15, 2010 11:13 am
    Twosmiles

    Great article. written so clearway thanks very much 4 the information.

  317. February 18, 2010 3:14 am
    max robinson

    oh thanks i always thought it was a virus

  318. February 23, 2010 11:07 am
    Archie

    Thank you/ I’d like all explanations in the world were like this.

  319. February 26, 2010 11:06 pm
    Steve

    I had always wondered about this. Like the 300+ before me, thank you for this article.

  320. February 27, 2010 4:39 pm
    alfredo

    hello, geek! I have a HUGE problem with svchost.exe :(
    Two days ago, my computer was running VERY slowly, and I looked into the tasks, and found out that svchost.exe was using most of my computer’s capacity… So.. I turned it off…… Afterwards, I restarted my computer, and it never started :’( It gives me the option of starting it in safe mode, safe mode and networking, safe mode with command promptt, last known good configuration, and start windows normally… I already selected all of them, and it does the same… It also gives me the chance of repairing the computer using the installation disk, but I lost it a year ago :( WHAT CAN I DO?! All my school projects are on my computer :’(
    BTW, I have a DELL inspiron 1525… If that info is necessary…….
    THANKS A LOT! – Fredd.

  321. March 2, 2010 2:39 am
    nasmit

    Josse Frnd.I think it is a little bible for novies.

  322. March 3, 2010 2:24 am
    Skip G

    I LLOOVVEE this. Why? It’s too much information. Why do I say that, and why do I love it?

    Because… too much information makes me wonder about and dig up and learn the full ramifications of what you said. AND, it will eventually make me understand why you listed all the other options, etc., and how they are useful. AWESOME.

    Thank you, seriously. Too many people are all about giving you only the information that you “need.” Well, we all should know that the simple answer is usually wrong, frequently harmful, and if it is correct, then it is often misinterpreted.

  323. March 3, 2010 9:59 am
    Jeff K

    I’ll keep piling on the praise. This is the explanation for svchost.exe that I have been trying to find for years!

  324. March 8, 2010 10:47 pm
    Barb

    DUH! Brain dead! I just saw the forum link at the top.

  325. March 8, 2010 11:30 pm
    Dilip

    Thanks for wonderful explaination

  326. March 10, 2010 12:35 am
    Eason

    Great ,very good ,Thank you

  327. March 12, 2010 2:39 pm
    carl

    mate, can you do it for XP?

  328. March 17, 2010 2:59 pm
    unknown

    “hi…….
    have you post any other topic….
    this was fantastic & i liked it as you tell us
    history and chemistry about it..

    Thax……”

  329. March 18, 2010 12:56 pm
    Roger

    thanks for this very informative article. I have seen long list of it in my firewall history. I’m sure vipre antivirus firewall automatically screens appropriate svchost.exe commands.

  330. March 25, 2010 1:53 am
    Baby Geek

    Really awesome work here! the article was simple to understand and easy to read!
    Good job! =)

  331. March 26, 2010 11:17 am
    shalem simon

    Thanks for the help. I thought it was a virus.
    you lost me at the top of this page with the instructions under the heading “Checking From the Command Line (Vista or XP Pro)” – like many of these, it assumes you know how to find the “command prompt” which I do not. Thanks anyway but this is a frequent issue for us novices with help written by the experts

  332. April 4, 2010 4:15 pm
    Isha

    The problem with using the svchost Viewer and Services from the Control Panel is that the descriptions of each of the items are written in gobbledegook. So the possible implications of stopping each of the svchost are in most cases a complete mystery.

  333. April 6, 2010 1:38 am
    Justin

    Thanks for this info. It was just what I needed to fix my CPU usage problem.

  334. April 6, 2010 6:48 am
    Manjunath.K

    Thanks for your kind information………………….

  335. April 6, 2010 8:22 pm
    Sergio

    All my life was wondering what were these .exe files… Thank you for your great information… now I can go sleeping serenely.

  336. April 8, 2010 1:03 am
    Chuck

    My svchost.exe is doing two problems:
    1. Consumes full CPU, making the machine work slow.
    2. Consumes lot of internet bandwidth.

    The first one I resolve temporarily by killing the specific svchost instance that is consuming the CPU time (using process explorer).
    But when i restart the machine, the problem recurs.
    Somene Please please help me solve this permanently.

    I got aware of the second problem when i used NetLimiter and found out that there are several IPs connected under svchost.exe and services.exe and are consuming large part of the internet bandwidth. i still have not found out a way out of this. Please help me in this too.

    Thanks All :)

  337. April 9, 2010 8:57 pm
    Don

    With regard to hogging memory, which is the main problem I have, I decided to go the other direction and max the memory. My PC came with 1 gig and I maxed it up to 2 gigs and everything is MUCH better.

  338. April 13, 2010 4:25 am
    bLiSs

    thank you very much for the information ^^.. now i know what are they hehehehe

  339. April 13, 2010 11:15 am
    Venkat Vasam

    Very good information. Thanks for sharing the details. It is very nice of you take time and share this.

  340. April 18, 2010 4:32 pm
    Dev Satpathy

    Great… very well explained…… I don’t understand why some of the services run in the background when you have no clue where they came from and why are they even there….

    Thanks a ton

  341. April 21, 2010 5:05 pm
    Sam

    Serivces can be for printers; items copied to clipboard; network services etc..
    These are manually started by the OS that’s why you have no clue ;-) you didn’t start them….

  342. April 22, 2010 1:51 am
    mevl

    the command prompt says, “acess is denied?! ” so what should i do?!

  343. April 23, 2010 2:45 am
    Gunanand Prasad

    Really it is very helpful to understand about the .dll accessability

  344. April 28, 2010 9:35 pm
    Mahfuz Hossain

    Thanks a lot.I was wondering what is svchost.exe & whats it purpose.Now,its clear to me.Anyway thanks again…

  345. April 30, 2010 12:13 am
    Kunal Anand

    I got this error message in my system : “Failed to set timeoiut. ‘setsockope(m_IngSocket, SOL_SOCKET, SO_RCVTIMEO, RcvTimeout, 4)’ failed” in svchost error box….have no clue what does this mean….can anyone help ??? pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee….please mail me

  346. May 12, 2010 5:24 am
    sid

    yest i deleted some of these svchost.exe from my laptop with win 7 home os,but after i restarted the laptop windows is not loading,getting black screen after starting windows screen,tried couple of times still no change.pls can any body help me to resolve this problem???thanks in adv.

  347. May 17, 2010 1:05 am
    sam

    Im in some deep trouble. one of my svchost.exe proccesses is taking up 99% of my Computer., i have no idea how it was triggered, i got my bullgaurd antivirus updated from 8.7 to 9.0 but i dont think its that. please help me with this :)

  348. May 18, 2010 10:10 am
    Koopaz

    @sam have you tried to turning off automatic updates?

  349. May 20, 2010 5:50 am
    Andy

    gut

  350. May 23, 2010 8:58 am
    nic

    Thx for tiz guide, but I have a question. Once my laptop start up, I received a lot of error and they say need to send an error report.. this has gave me a headache.. my laptop lags and my mouse can hardly moves. How can I solve this.? Is it becuz I off my firewall n all this occur? Thx in advance^^

  351. May 30, 2010 11:14 am
    Dominica

    I thought they were virus.. Thanks for clearing that up.

  352. June 5, 2010 7:55 am
    michael

    thank you very much . keep in touch

  353. June 6, 2010 1:27 am
    Elle

    It has been 2 years after it was written and it just saved one more lost soul. Thank you so much! It just solved my problem

  354. June 10, 2010 9:07 am
    Caboose

    doesnt work for me i only have end process, end process tree, set priority, and set affinity. any idea what to do?

  355. June 10, 2010 10:33 pm
    RYAN

    WELL YOU CAN CREATE A BATCH FILE THATS ENDS ALL OF THEM WITHOUT SJUTING DOWN UR PC
    THIS IS THE SCRIPT

    TASKKILL /IM SVCHOST.EXE
    SHUTDOWN -A

    PASTE THAT IN A NOTEPAD DOC AND SAVE AS NAME.BAT

  356. June 13, 2010 11:51 pm
    Prashant

    it helped to understand about svchost.exe….thanks…………
    however can u share some knowledge of a virus using it>>>>>>

  357. June 16, 2010 3:41 pm
    Serdar

    Hello, I have windows 7 installed on my computer and task manager shows many svchost.exe, but one of them is running under my Username, I know it shouldn’t be. Its not running with any services, only consumes my all CPU and RAM fully that I cannot do anything. Killing svchost.exe from task manager brings good situation but immediately it reruns again. Most forums tell that it is some kind of malware, some are tell about virus. How can I fix it? Please urgently help!

  358. July 3, 2010 9:03 pm
    Parham

    That was really helpful about understanding what a “svchost.exe” running in my proccess means , but I still have some overcache from my cpu wich couldn’t understand it would be virus or malware or something …

    It’s funny when you have over 60% of a AMD Phenom II x4 965 for a single svchost.exe !

  359. July 15, 2010 6:34 pm
    Jackwee

    I actually thought svchost was a virus. . . there is so much running that i really, really thought it was some really serious virus working.

  360. July 17, 2010 1:57 pm
    Carl

    Thanks for the info on how to fix this svchost issue. My clients CPU utilization was being completely eaten up by this process running. Using your methods described in the article I was able find out where the issue was coming from in Win Services. Thanks a bunch! Carl – Sacramento PC Pros

  361. July 23, 2010 8:54 am
    Buster Jersey

    Thanks for the clear explanation. You should go into the technical teaching profession.

  362. July 23, 2010 8:50 pm
    Ben

    this article may be helpful but so compliated for general users with little knowledge over window os and computer. if you can give me recommedation which ones should be disable and ones must not, it will be good for readers. like WMA, which is a giant monster, it eat so much resource but I really want to know a way to trim it down………….

  363. July 26, 2010 7:34 am
    Vishal

    Very Informative. I never understood what exactly this “Svchost” thing was. Thanks a lot.

  364. July 30, 2010 10:12 am
    Mike Mcc

    As long as XP survives this info will be useful. Now they’re not so annoying. Thanks.

  365. August 3, 2010 1:59 am
    cak.indian

    thanxs bro,

  366. August 3, 2010 7:56 pm
    Roeger

    Now I know, thanks. ;-]

  367. August 4, 2010 1:41 am
    Shumayal

    @geek
    The above post on svchost.exe is a good one, but can be misleading. I have multiple instances of svchost.exe running WITHOUT the task manager showing me “PROCESSES FROM ALL USERS”

    My Windows XP SP3, when i go to My Computer, and open any of the partitions of the hard disk or any removable device, instead of showing me its contents it opens a “OPEN WITH” dialog box.
    I have dual OS (Win 7 Ultimate & Win XP Pro) on my computer which is basically the reason why its still running as you will see further. My Windows XP does not have an Antivirus neither an Internet connectivity ( i have not set it up) & can’t successfully when i try (however im not worried about that :) )
    Since it does not have an AntiVirus installed by me is because of its no internet connectivity whereas my Win 7 has both.

    So when i boot up in windows 7,my antivirus – AVG detects a virus just a few minuites after boot up and reports a “Trojon Horse SHeur3.ACPX” and detects a file something like “yqqqui.exe” (sorry, could not get the correct one as i had emptied my virus vault & the history by mistake :( )

    I conclude that I have seen multiple instances of svchost.exe AFTER the virus came on the above mentioned condition in the task manager.

    So basically its useless for me to keep windows xp anymore so i don’t have it anymore, which is also a reason that i could not provide the correct filename.

    Please help me @Geek,
    XP is vital for me as my HDD & other USB flash drives work only in it (which is again another problem of my computer)

    Thanks a lot,
    Shumayal

  368. August 4, 2010 1:48 am
    shumayal

    @Geek, I would be glad if you could solve this issue of mines too,

    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprohardware/thread/b8835ffd-3eb8-442d-a660-7d11ee7d6a1f/

    Thanks thanks thanks a lot !
    Luv u~
    shumayal

  369. August 4, 2010 3:23 pm
    Paul Kirk

    Thank you very much this was very helpful

  370. August 8, 2010 10:20 am
    Katja

    Wonderful explanation. Now I can at least understand what is happening if not do something about it! Many thanks.

  371. August 10, 2010 1:04 am
    dinesh

    Very good explanation in the form as everyone understand..KUDOUS……

  372. August 10, 2010 9:26 am
    Muhammad Asim

    Thanks dear..it is a wonderful information…

  373. August 10, 2010 12:50 pm
    fady

    excellent

  374. August 12, 2010 6:18 am
    mukesh kumar

    Very clear and to the point answer about svchost.exe running processes
    Tnks.

  375. August 13, 2010 12:27 pm
    sai

    very nice…VEry very thanks for such a useful…you people are doing community service…Now I know how to stop, start or restart a process. THANKS !!

  376. August 15, 2010 11:32 am
    Luke

    I seem to have a problem. Whenever I boot up my computer it says that svchost.exe has stopped working. Is this bad? Does it mean I have a virus on my computer? Can someone please explain this to me?

  377. August 15, 2010 6:08 pm
    Larry

    Reading this was the best use of my time today. It saved me countless hours of confusion. I really want to thank you.

  378. August 16, 2010 8:12 pm
    Andy

    And this is why, as soon as I have the cash, I am buying a Mac…

  379. August 18, 2010 5:43 am
    Amit

    Very nicely explained…..! Thank U

  380. August 18, 2010 10:48 am
    Rich VonLintig

    My concern with svchost is not that there are so many, but that one of them is using so much memory. Between svchost and wuauclt these Microsoft processes are using up half of my 0.75 GB memory at critical (like I’m waiting) times like start-up and log on to the internet. I am pretty sure this makes these processes much slower on my DSL system than they could be. In fact, I am pretty much certain that my dial up internet from years ago worked faster than DSL does now at initialization. Isn’t there someone out there who can make Microsoft stop screwing things up. No, not the government! Not that!

  381. August 19, 2010 8:35 am
    anurag

    A very helpful article indeed.

  382. August 21, 2010 7:28 pm
    Thomas

    Thank you, I managed to speed up my laptop 2x seriously

  383. August 24, 2010 5:48 pm
    Ugreenjr

    Thanx for the useful explanation,

  384. August 27, 2010 12:33 am
    Aswin

    Very useful article…..Thank You so much

  385. August 27, 2010 3:58 pm
    oldky

    Well, it is really OUTSTANDING, EXPLICIT explanation! And the most of all – it IS in English!
    Bravo!

  386. August 28, 2010 7:21 am
    jon

    great article! very helpfull thanks

  387. September 2, 2010 11:43 pm
    Carl

    Just tried a new trick to keep down the slowing process from svchost (I’m on a telephone modem). I simply changed to priority (right click on item in “Processes” from Task Manager) of Internet Explorer to “high”. That seemed to help a lot.

  388. September 10, 2010 1:38 am
    Dgarkie

    Hello i was wondering if there may be some malware that uses svchost as a mask because i have windows 7, i have trimmed all the fat on my system and am running on 4 core AMD @2.2 Ghz, 3GB ddr2, 1.5TB HDD with only 30GB of that space used,& geforce 8800GTS, my problem is that one of the svchost processes is taking nearly 70% cpu usage when all that i have running is taskmanager and chrome or the fox, and i tried to end process and guess what it ended, all cpu taxing went to normal and my system didnt crash and seems to work correctly, i didnt think to go to services and see what was using this svchost until i read this

  389. September 10, 2010 1:48 am
    Dgarkie

    i forgot to mention that once i noticed it it went on for more than half an hour before i killed it(because i always understood that you couldn’t kill svchost)

  390. September 13, 2010 8:53 am
    Smitha

    Hi,
    This is such a great piece of information..thanks a ton.

  391. September 13, 2010 10:40 am
    Emil

    It does not work on my PC. It says, that tasklist can´t be found:(

    I go into the start menu and into run and the I type “tasklist /SVC”

    I use Windows XP home edition on an Acer Aspire 3000.

  392. September 14, 2010 11:45 pm
    Hanna

    honestly this article has helped a lot except im stuck :/.
    For some reason when i go to the task manager and i right click not all the options come up.? i have no clue why but im starting to feel kinda dumb for asking ha
    when i right click it. it only appears to the part where it says “SET AFFINITY” “PROPERTIES”

  393. September 14, 2010 11:47 pm
    Hanna

    i have looked on all the options but i can’t seem to fix it.? Can anyone please help me. this whole svchost thing is REALLY starting to bugg me and its slowing down my entire computer. It would be greatly appreciated if someone could help me please and thank you :D

  394. September 16, 2010 7:40 am
    Catherine

    Your the boom, i promise!

  395. September 17, 2010 12:28 am
    gayan

    thanks boss excellent explanation

  396. September 17, 2010 8:37 pm
    killy

    what should i do, the desktop in the office i currently in used, every time i open it the icons in the screen will disappear and it will hang up and there is a dialog box came out stated..svchost.exe-has an application error.

  397. September 18, 2010 12:05 pm
    Hanna

    @geek ahh can you please help solve my issues to?
    i know everyone is asking but i just can’t seem to figure it out.
    please and thanks,
    Hanna

  398. September 21, 2010 1:50 am
    Lyoko G

    Simple and straight to the point. Nice!

  399. September 22, 2010 3:30 pm
    Icecold

    Thanks for the great article, very useful.

  400. September 26, 2010 3:05 pm
    Fate

    im using a windows vista service pack 2 home edition.
    got the same problem, however I CANT open task manager.
    wad’u reckon i do? since all ur solutions require me to open task manager.
    ~.~

  401. September 28, 2010 12:54 am
    anant joshi

    yes , i got exact i want, thanx a lot

  402. September 28, 2010 11:38 am
    Slava

    Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  403. September 29, 2010 6:57 pm
    Mobile-PC-Fix

    This site is great!!! so much useful knowledge, thanks.

  404. October 1, 2010 7:33 pm
    RaYZoR

    Thanks, this was a really detailed and nice How-To accompanied by clear screen shots. Thanks, I feel smarter now :)

  405. October 2, 2010 7:30 am
    Richard

    when I right click on svchost.exe all it shows is end process, end process tree and set priority no go to services. Its an xp

  406. October 2, 2010 7:35 am
    Richard

    And also hovering does nothing and show processes for all users is clicked

  407. October 6, 2010 12:44 am
    Ahmad Sardar

    Thanks, that was really helpful. I feel enlightened!

  408. October 13, 2010 5:51 pm
    Adam

    Thanks it was very good and useful.

  409. October 16, 2010 2:54 am
    srikiran

    Thanks its very useful Now i can turn off unwanted services !!!!

  410. October 18, 2010 12:20 am
    Srinivas

    Thanks,
    It is good article.

    Srini

  411. October 18, 2010 9:48 am
    dnguyen

    2 years later, still very useful. Thank you.

  412. October 19, 2010 7:36 am
    ockerb

    I agree dnguyen, I have been struggling with windows since the day it came out and this is some of the best info I have received. Thanks geek

  413. October 19, 2010 4:55 pm
    JOHN

    Jon,
    My office computer is a dell 5150. It has a problem with svchost.exe – application error. It goes to Win32 services on the startup and says it needs to close. Anything I select: debug don’t send report send report it brings up my desk top with no icons. Can you help me?
    Thanks, John

  414. October 21, 2010 4:00 am
    kumar

    Great article…thanks

  415. October 21, 2010 4:44 pm
    chuck

    great clear explanation.

  416. October 22, 2010 7:50 am
    Kael

    Thx for your information.

  417. October 22, 2010 2:47 pm
    sam

    Thanks for such a nice article. It helped a lot.
    I need to know if some SVChost.exe crashed, how can we know what caused the error?
    Thanks in advance.
    Sam

  418. October 24, 2010 8:57 am
    Farzad Zaree

    Thanks a lot for your complete describe.it was very good and this question was my one of questions for about a year!

  419. October 25, 2010 9:11 am
    craig dawson (15)

    thanks so much for the help. i read online and loads of people were saying it is a virus and to download special scanners. i didn’t because i though they were probably viruses not the svchost! i think you should mabye post this around a bit more cause its really useful advice and loads of people just go straight to you tube and download thing they dont need. you could create a tutorial video…

  420. October 27, 2010 8:52 am
    ri3wan

    wow really thats great, thnaks a lot

  421. October 28, 2010 9:08 am
    Benjamin Ranjolkar

    thanks for this great info.

  422. November 2, 2010 10:27 pm
    ???

    You said that we couldn’t shut down a svchost.exe so I tried, it was shut down and soon after the custom settings set for my toolbar were reset. I hope it will fix it self with a reboot.

  423. November 16, 2010 12:05 am
    Duck

    any list of programs using svchost.exe that can be terminated without harm to my computer and brain?
    even a few would help.

  424. November 18, 2010 3:08 pm
    Pat

    This is a great tut. I read some ones question that you wanted a list of XP processes that were essential.

    This is what my essential processes look like with no other programs running “Bare Bones”.
    taskmgr.exe <–Task Manager (CTRL ALT DEL)
    alg.exe <– Application Layer Gateway (For 3rd Party Plugins and Firewall ect)
    explorer.exe <–This is the Windows Graphical User Interface.(File Explorer)
    lsass.exe <– Local Security Authentication Software Service (Security for the OS)
    nvsvc32.exe <– Nividia graphics card driver (Yours will be different if you have a different brand card)
    rundll32.exe <– Run Dynamic Link Library (This starts your .dll files for all your programs)
    services.exe <– MS Win O/S "start and stop" services manager
    smss.exe <– Sessions Manager Sub-System (Handles sessions on your Computer)
    spoolsv.exe <– Spool Service is responsible for transferring data in a buffer for things like your printer.
    svchost.exe <– You NEED multiples of these running because MS decided to use less EXE files
    svchost.exe And begin to use DLL files instead for better control of the OS and to avoid system
    svchost.exe crashes by assigning a default process to open multiple programs.
    svchost.exe This way is one program crashes the entire O/S won't blue screen on you.
    System <— This is the default system counter (Defiantly can't be removed)
    System Idle Process <– This is simply to show you how much of your system is doing nothing.
    wdfmgr.exe <– MS Media player 10x This helps minimize compatibility issues while its in use.
    winlogon.exe <— This handles the login and logout process on your computer

    That's 17 processes just to be in idle mode. Of course the task manager is not going to be running when its closed… ;-)

    You may have other programs that need to run for YOU like if you have a Logitec mouse you will see
    KHALMNPR.EXE and SetPoint.exe

    If you have a keyboard that has email buttons ect you may see zHotkey.exe

    It would be a lot easier if programmers would clearly identify there processes.. Like Logitec.exe and LogitecUpdate.exe But alas they like to keep us in the dark…

    Hope this helps

    Pat

  425. November 19, 2010 12:46 am
    amirtha

    It was a great explanation. Thanks for your time and help

  426. November 23, 2010 8:39 pm
    Axd1997

    Help plez. My firewall (COMODO firewall) tells me that a program by the name of svchost.exe is using 100% of my data usage, wireless, and all my memory I’m no idiot in pcs so give me the answer plain and as it comes axd1997@gmail.com

  427. November 25, 2010 7:37 am
    Toun

    thank you for the clear explanation

  428. December 4, 2010 8:09 am
    jesal

    Thanks for the explanation

    :)

  429. December 12, 2010 7:36 pm
    woodsytattooman

    I had serious vista issues and had 4 svchost running and using alot of cpu and memory.I done a complete system recovery to finally fix my computer problems.Just for everyones information i have updated everything on my pc and there arent any svc host running.So im wondering if these are even needed at all?My computer is running faster then ever and boots quickly compared to before i done a factory recovery.It was taking me 10 minutes or more just to boot up vista svc host is the only explanation to the problem i was having.

  430. December 16, 2010 11:34 pm
    deposit

    A wonderful explanation, thanks for the knowledge sharing!

  431. December 18, 2010 2:12 am
    Kein

    I thought it was viruses…very good..definitely useful info..

  432. December 19, 2010 12:46 pm
    activist

    thanks all of u. This is indeed truly great cyber social service. I get a lot of temp files and system slows down unnecessarily. Even regular deletion does not solve this. Some of the temp files just refuse to delete. What cud be the reason?

  433. December 23, 2010 3:27 am
    kradangel

    thanks to all… very informative

  434. December 26, 2010 5:41 am
    MOhammed

    Thankx for your excellent explanation also, in my pc i have a error in svchost.exe , error is svchost.exe I/O error and shows some numbers, i wasnt able to log in as a user , then i logged in the safemode it was working , sometimes this problem is persisting, do u have a solution, which one i need to disable

  435. December 27, 2010 2:17 pm
    Sam

    Excellent article, great link to the process explorer. I didn’t even know it existed. Thanks and I admire your techical expertise.

    Take care,
    Sam

  436. January 2, 2011 11:28 am
    Mzee

    Thanks. great info, short and sweet.

  437. January 6, 2011 12:58 pm
    AP

    Very good explanation and it definitely helps. Thank you!

  438. January 12, 2011 4:51 pm
    mackydb

    I sooooo love this post. Thank you so much!!

  439. January 14, 2011 9:33 pm
    UncleBoB

    Clear, concise, no BS explanation. Great job – Thanks!!

  440. January 15, 2011 12:42 am
    jmaf

    Great explanation. Another reason my next computer will be a mac.

  441. January 19, 2011 4:49 am
    SM

    Before reading the article I was in confuse that what is this process exactly.
    Now i got a clear view about it.
    Thanks a lot for such article with short and clear explanation about the svchost!!!

  442. January 19, 2011 5:15 pm
    Samir G

    Wow! That’s very interesting I must say. It’s sort of a little tidbit of insight into internal workings of Windows, you know.

    I always wondered what the “hack” svchost.exe is every time it seemed to overload the system, or every time the name of this process got listed as a virus on various virus watch web sites. But I never bothered doing any research into this matter, I just kept wondering up until now.

    Your explanation was very simple, easy to understand. Just as much I needed to know about it.

    The ProcessExplorer is a great utility by the way, thanks for the tip!

    Thanks for sharing Geek!

  443. January 29, 2011 4:58 am
    Imthiyaz U K

    Excellent record for svchost…

    Great info… Thanks

  444. January 30, 2011 12:22 am
    wbweyc I R A N

    thanks a lot

  445. February 1, 2011 7:11 am
    goldwolfsangel

    that was so easy to understand it was almost scary, although i do have a question, when i right click the only options that come up are “end process”, “end process tree” and “set priority”.i am using an older laptop that says it was designed for windows xp.bought it used, only recently started haveing problems. if you need more info on my system tell me what you need and how to find it (i don’t have the box, manual or any paper work) and i will let you know. thanks in advance

  446. February 5, 2011 11:14 am
    bacolod

    thanks a lot for posting this article and for doing it piece by piece. Good job!

  447. February 8, 2011 2:12 am
    sumith ponnani

    great work yar..u made a clear picture..thanks

  448. February 8, 2011 5:08 am
    nik

    thanks man, It is great knowledgebase. Everyone appreciate.

  449. February 12, 2011 2:59 am
    ajith

    thanks, Great article …

  450. February 18, 2011 5:32 pm
    Rasta

    Thanks for sharing.

    Definitely explains a lot. Easy instructions too.

    I learned something today.

  451. February 26, 2011 9:40 pm
    Alex

    hmm thanks for the info however mine seems to be taking up 100,000k memory for one of them, possible virus i don’t know any ideas

  452. February 26, 2011 10:28 pm
    Jim

    Great article! Finally understand what it is!

  453. March 11, 2011 2:23 am
    keshav37a

    great article
    heped me a lot
    disabled many unnecessary services like google update, prefetch etc
    now my computer runs at double speed

  454. March 13, 2011 4:57 pm
    mahdi k

    it was great but sometimes malware misuse Svchost. how could i find them ?”

  455. March 16, 2011 6:05 pm
    Louise Tyvol

    I’ve been running IE9 beta? Should I uninstall it? System 32 folder is missing the “svchost.exe”. Searching computer did not find it. Just ran “superantispyware” – did not find any viruses.
    Ran Process explorer. Ran Root Repal. Then Process Explorer showed that in fuschia, which is supposed to mean virus. None found yet though. Also ran Norton symantec, malwarebytes, Ccleaner. Don’t know what to do.

  456. March 18, 2011 5:33 pm
    Yeojeel

    Hi Geek,

    Process Manager for XP is so cool and powerful. It’s a step closer to understanding my laptops behavior.
    Thank you so much!
    And I’m still learning. =)

    Cheers man!

  457. March 19, 2011 7:14 pm
    Joe Hamleton

    Thanks alot this has been a good read.

  458. March 21, 2011 11:47 pm
    santosh

    Hey this was realy helpfull thanks for this artical……..

  459. March 29, 2011 9:17 pm
    sunnyisland

    I agree. Good article.

  460. March 30, 2011 5:57 am
    hollow73

    Execllent tutorial, many thanks!!

  461. April 5, 2011 4:02 am
    Tasi

    Thanks
    That’s very nice

  462. April 7, 2011 3:24 pm
    bart

    I was always wondering what this was and why so many were running. Thank you very much for the clear explanation it was very helpful:-)

  463. April 9, 2011 6:45 am
    Edgar Manukyan

    Great, worked for me. SSDP (and by default also UPnP) were causing 60-70% usage of CPU. Stopped them and disabled, did not encounter any problem yet.
    Thanks.

  464. April 16, 2011 12:20 pm
    Geekster

    I only have 1 and I have so many proccesses I just want to delete 1.

  465. April 16, 2011 12:21 pm
    Geekster

    Sooooo many…

  466. April 19, 2011 5:07 am
    Crazy

    Thanks man. Helped a lot. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) and that’s what you did. Very easy to understand and makes my life easier. Thanks again!

  467. April 21, 2011 10:16 am
    Dieter Schmied

    For me, this is interesting but, now I need a simple. if possible, explanation of what all of the functions do. In other words, why do I need a particular service? Is there no alternative to enrolling in college courses leading to a degree in , say, computer sciences for instance. I am not even sure what computer sciences are exactly.

    I am not suggesting that we go back to arranging those data cards to be fed to a computer running FORTRAN, but is there someway that non-Geeks can sort of understand what is happening in our computers? I feel that I have forty copies of the same files often slowing my computer down.

  468. April 22, 2011 9:35 am
    CopOut

    Some good info here but I expected more from geeks

    Telling me to disable the tasks I want or don;t need is like telling me to turn lead into gold

    I hate it when techs cop out like his

  469. April 23, 2011 4:25 am
    dara

    dear, sir

    I have use operating system window xp. I have problem with genuine window xp. How can I solve this problem with genuine ?

    Another, I have problem with window 7, My pc have not found basic system device for driver with Laptop sony viao

    Thanks

    dara

  470. April 29, 2011 11:07 pm
    Raymond

    Sir i Delete svchost.exe in regedit its ok???

  471. May 3, 2011 7:55 pm
    david rudisel

    please send me information on this

  472. May 4, 2011 8:14 am
    Rainer

    thank you for your interesting article !

    i have an svchost process that uses 30% of my Processor and i let it run for 6 hours !
    nothing changed and it is still uses 30% of my processor SO i close the process and nothing happened till now!!!!
    is it good or bad?
    somebody answer me plz

  473. May 6, 2011 6:20 am
    Harsha

    Wow, Thanx a lot for this post. As many guys says I’ve wondered too about this svchost.exe. You’ve explained it very well. Thanx again.

  474. May 9, 2011 7:34 am
    jorgen

    Thank you very much i thought it was a trojan or so……seems to be the other way round :)

  475. May 13, 2011 8:04 am
    Sergio

    Thank you finally I will stop deleting with out mercy,, and them wondering why the system is not working at least I will take the time to read and do. I all ways though it was some kind of cookies or unwanted files from sites that I visited, specially those with xxx !!!!!!

  476. May 15, 2011 9:14 am
    Jeannie

    http://svchostviewer.codeplex.com/

    is excelllllllent for figuring out if you need it really.
    Safe and malware,etc.free

  477. May 21, 2011 1:50 pm
    Michael

    Fantastic , finding out loads of shit my PC is doing needlessly :)

  478. May 21, 2011 11:21 pm
    jreist

    this is the best site i ever stumbled on.
    i had a svchost.exe taking up 99% of my cpu.
    i’m running xp, so i downloaded the Process Explore software recommended on your site
    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
    i ran the process explorer
    found the svchost.exe which was hogging the cpu, and saw that it was my hp printer networking software. stopped the service and immediately my cpu was freed up!

    you saved me hours, maybe days of frustration!!!!

  479. May 27, 2011 12:37 am
    Marc28

    i suspected more than 7 svchost.exe is virus?

  480. May 30, 2011 2:19 am
    MOHAMMAD

    new inforamation had been added to my dictionaray. Thanks

  481. May 31, 2011 5:57 am
    Puff

    Ahoy!

    So… One of the svchost executables on my PC, apparently answers for my sound devices, but why is it taking all of my CPU percentage and grows in RAM requirement by the second? I have to end it in order to actually do something on my PC… The result is – no sound of any kind. As a matter of fact, I stopped hearing the birds outside as well :P

    Help, please :|

  482. May 31, 2011 10:42 am
    RubberGoose

    OMG you are my hero! made my day thought those 11 instances of svchost were malicious items!

  483. June 3, 2011 1:28 am
    Amit Bariar

    Thanks for this useful information.
    I was wondering why this much svchost services are running on my system.
    This article really helped me to understand the reason.

  484. June 4, 2011 1:57 am
    Kitram

    Hello,

    I’m using Windows 7 Enterprise, I recently noticed that “svchost.exe” using my internet bandwidth when i connected to the internet,(i had no problem before) its not because of “windows update” because i disabled it completely . (or any other program updates – i disabled all other programs automatic updates) and I don’t know which software is updating or something. it keeps connecting to random ip.

    I terminate the connection IP using comodo but few minutes later it keep connect to another or similar IP addresses. I tack some ip and its belongs to microsoft. Help me to finf which software uses the internet.

    Since I have limited bandwidth per month i can not allow it to download. Please help, I did not find anything useful on the internet regarding my problem.

    I also check for viruses using Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, microsoft essential security and kaspersky, nothing found.

    please somebody help me to fix this problem. Much appreciated.

  485. June 9, 2011 2:15 am
    danni

    Hi
    I got a problem recently when I using windows 7/64. When I install an application (under c:\gemcom.) on my computer, The svchost.exe (c:\windows\system32\svchost.exe) will lock my application folder like (c:\gemcom\fonts). Then I can’t rename gemcom folder.
    How I can fix this problem.
    Thanks
    Danni

  486. June 13, 2011 4:12 pm
    Mark

    Thanks! That was really informative and told me exactly what i wanted to know plus much much more about how to do something about SVChost taking huge amounts of RAM. Every other website merely told me it was important, don’t touch. Now i can fix my problem (which was at root, caused by apple as always).

  487. July 5, 2011 11:51 pm
    Syed

    Thank you for sharing wonderfull information

  488. July 9, 2011 9:10 am
    mann

    Nice information,helped to remove my confusions

  489. July 13, 2011 2:22 pm
    Karl

    Ok.. thats cool. Good article. Lots of comments.lol

  490. July 15, 2011 7:05 am
    Rajesh

    Thanks.. It was nice article.. described in such a way that anyone can understand easily..

  491. July 20, 2011 6:15 am
    Justin Tyme Beck

    (Yes that’s my real-name)That seem’s to help IDK I have to probably restart the PC. “I just wanted to say good luck we’re all counting on you.” LOLZ

  492. July 22, 2011 6:38 am
    Brent James Thomas

    Keeps crashing on my computer… How do I fix that (please e-mail with a answer if you can tell me please). I’m on Windows 2000.

  493. July 27, 2011 8:57 am
    Fiona

    Amazing for an article written in 2008 and it’s still very good and to the point.
    Excellent Thanks!

  494. July 28, 2011 10:37 pm
    Jim

    Thank you very much for a very clear and helpful article. I can see that it has helped a lot of others too. Your webpage will be among my favourites from now on.

  495. July 28, 2011 11:49 pm
    audiophiler

    I glad to hear Black Viper’s website is back and running. I used to learn so much from that site before

  496. August 3, 2011 9:45 am
    Sheen

    …but I hear Black Adder isn’t as fortunate.

    In other news: If I had a say in the development of Windows/XP/7
    vista? “Bill Gates isn’t your real father Vista, you’re adopted.”
    Vista: “hey, that’s mean *sniff* *BSOD*”

    anyway…
    if I was able to change something, it would be to have better ‘Help’/Description functionality in Windows, it’s easy.
    You write the words.
    They tell the user all about the process, the .dll file they’re thinking about deleting to “save space”. Have “Not A Virus” next to the safe windows processes, and “I need this to live” next to the ones that would uck with user shi.

    Device Manager…how I want to love thee, my wayward son.
    “search internet for driver

  497. August 7, 2011 2:55 am
    Alex

    Now I can finally get rid of the two scvhost.exe’s, which use more than 90,000k memory

  498. August 9, 2011 3:25 am
    Anto Dominic@techiesniffer.blogspot.com

    Nice info…but once i tried to stop that svhost but it makes me to force shutdown my system……Can u explain why is it so…..

  499. August 9, 2011 11:59 am
    Reza Tehrani

    thanx a lot…

  500. August 10, 2011 6:13 am
    isbahmir

    i had inserted a memory card in my vista laptop,, n i guess i had sm sort of virus,,,,.wen i used it after shutin down wen i switched on my laptop again my laptop was totaly blank,,only a dilog box sayin–SVC HOST appeared on d screen ,., later i had to send it for repair,,, nw a few days ago i inserted a pen drive in my windows xp pc n i didn scan it b4 using,,wen i opened d pen drive i saw n icon named-svc host,, can u please explain why does dis happen..does dis also indicate sm sort of virus n infection?

  501. August 10, 2011 7:48 am
    Bala

    Thanks a lot for the information, Really useful.

  502. August 13, 2011 3:23 pm
    mohammad

    thank you now i am a bit more relaxed :)

  503. August 18, 2011 2:39 am
    venkatesh

    Simple and powerful.

    I’m surprised to see today about SVC :)

  504. August 23, 2011 12:32 am
    Sarav6788

    This is So Informative Dude.. Thanks for sharing

  505. August 24, 2011 7:12 am
    sagar bhoale

    Thanks!!!
    Before this i was not knowing about svchost.exe process. Now i have some information about it.

  506. August 27, 2011 3:11 pm
    Buckey3

    Been looking at it for years – now i way of look at it different..

  507. September 13, 2011 10:28 am
    nick malek

    why is svchost taking so much of my internet time i am on slow dialup i have to wait some times 10>15 minutes for it to stop downloading i would like them to let me know what this new download is do i need a download every time i log in to the internet

  508. September 19, 2011 4:29 pm
    Joe Smith

    Does this work for Windows 7….if it doesn’t can you tell me how

  509. September 25, 2011 4:40 pm
    Om

    Very nice article… :)

  510. September 26, 2011 6:13 am
    RKG

    Thanks :-)

  511. September 26, 2011 3:24 pm
    Subir

    Excellent information..cleared all my doubts about this service! Thanks!

  512. September 30, 2011 3:42 pm
    Doyle

    Geek, Why only svchost.exe for every set of services. Can’t we have different names to avoid confusion?

  513. October 1, 2011 7:26 am
    Didnt Help :(

    hey geek,i did as you said and it says its disabled but svchost still turns on and because of it i cant run some things because it uses port 80,any way to turn it off FOREVER?

  514. October 8, 2011 4:36 am
    help me pls

    i have 2 winlogons, is this bad or good?

  515. October 10, 2011 11:41 pm
    Umesh Tgb

    Extremely helpful. Thank you so much.
    You should have a Facebook “Like” button here.

  516. October 17, 2011 10:40 am
    robin

    Ok i am frustrated, i tried hovering and nothing happens. I tried right clicking and nothing happens. Wish you could just jump over and clean this task manager box up for me !!!!!!!!!!!!!

  517. October 17, 2011 9:39 pm
    subeer

    Not working for me. I disabled “TrkWks” service, but svchost still running and after using process explorer, i can see all the related services but i don’t know which one to stop.
    does anybody have any idea?

  518. October 18, 2011 9:07 am
    Twenty three

    Excellent post, you’ve teached me a lot about processses and dll’s. Thank you so much.

  519. October 20, 2011 7:07 am
    Anupam Roy

    Dats kewl… Thnx 4 d info… It erased a long time confusion in my mind… :)

  520. October 23, 2011 3:54 pm
    Ali Mahdi

    Tnx a lot, simple but powerful explanation.

  521. October 24, 2011 7:44 am
    apekade

    Nice explanation Thanks howtogreek

  522. October 29, 2011 2:38 pm
    Ashley

    Thanks but how do I know which ones i need and which I can turn off?? Yes I’m a PC moron :P

  523. November 4, 2011 1:10 pm
    Nive

    Hey hey!
    Thanks a lot for the info. I was tired of asking it! Right now, I was cleaning a computer, and I saw a lot of svchost.exe… The first thing I thought was “OMG! Some of this archives must be virus!” and I wasn’t wrong xD But in fact, without this guide, I could deleted any other important archive!
    One more time, thanks a lot.
    Nive

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