What is "svchost.exe"?

Anyone who's opened the task manager in any version of Windows has seen the process “svchost.exe” at one point or another. What's more confusing is that svchost is usually found to have more than one instance! What are they all doing there and just how much of my precious memory are they wasting?

Let's talk!

Svchost is kind of a catch-all. It is used to host multiple services within one process. This helps to actually conserve memory in your system by having one process govern many. Stuff like Windows Update, the Event Log, Audio Services and bunches of other programs, processes and a the like are all found under the svchost umbrella.

If you want to identify what services are using svchost there are a couple of different ways.

In Windows XP:
Open a Command Prompt and type “tasklist /svc”, minus the quotes. This will bring up a list of what processes are running under svchost, so you can see how important it is.

In Windows Vista:
No need to open a Command Prompt here. Just open task manager, click on the “processes” tab and make sure the checkbox that says “Show processes from all users” is checked. Next, Right-Click on any of the svchost processes and select “Go to Services”. There they are, every item that uses a process which you now know more about!

~Andrew

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