What is Svchost.exe?
Svchost.exe is a process on your computer that hosts, or contains, other individual services that Windows uses to perform various functions. For example, Windows Defender uses a service that is hosted by a svchost.exe process. There can be multiple instances of svchost.exe running on your computer, with each instance containing different services. One instance of svchost.exe might host a single service for a program, and another instance might host several services related to Windows. You can use Task Manager to view which services are running under each instance of svchost.exe.
Identifying the actual services and programs that are running inside each SVCHOST.EXE process is a task well worth knowing, especially when the process eats up 99 or 100 percent of your CPU! So before we dive into solutions, let’s get a deeper understanding of what this process actually does and how you can go about fixing some of the problems that might occur. Firstly, svchost stands for “service host” and it does exactly what as the name suggest: helps to “host” services. A service in Windows is simply a program in the operating system that does a particular job and runs in the background at all times when your computer is on, even if you are not logged in. Most programs that you are familiar with run as stand-alone executables, such .EXEs. However, most services are implemented in the form of DLLs, which cannot run on their own. Hence, svchost loads those DLLs and runs them itself. That’s why when you open the Windows Task Manager, you’ll see a bunch of svchost.exe processes running
“Svchost.exe†is the file name for the generic Windows process called Service Host which resides in \Windows\System32\. Since it acts as a host (think of a host as a container), it can collect multiple services together and run them in a common environment. This results in a more efficient arrangement since it reduces boot time and system overhead by eliminating the need to run dozens of separate services, each in their own memory spaces. Different groups of Windows services have different requirements in terms of system access and security, which is why separate instances of svchost.exe are needed. Why might I want to identify what is running in a service host? If you are reading this article, you are probably trying to do some troubleshooting. Perhaps your machine is running slowly and you are looking at the process list to find what process is using so much of your processor power. You may notice that a svchost has your CPU (Central Processing Unit – your processor) usage pegged
If you’re on a Windows machine, you’ve no doubt been forced to do the three-finger shuffle – control-alt-delete (^-alt-del), which was invented as a programmer’s debugging tool by my namesake, David Bradley. Rather than rebooting the machine, Windows brings up the Task Manager, with this command and lets you see what is running on your machine and kill suspicious processes. So, you’ve probably seen entries in the Task Manager list like “svchost.exe”, “jusched.exe”, and “ctfmon.exe” and asked what are they and why are they running? Microsoft says that svchost.exe is “a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”, in English, it’s a system program that launches other Windows system programs that cannot be run directly without being hosted. So, it’s not a worry, but if you see dozens of svchost.exe entries in Task Manager, you might think about trimming down or disabling unneeded Windows services (How-to Geek has a lot more on identifying what each svchost
What is svchost.exe? According to Microsoft, “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries” or, in plain English, svchost.exe is a system program that is needed by Windows to launch other programs that cannot be run without being hosted (thus the generic host process). Do I need svchost.exe? Can I uninstall svchost.exe? Why there are so many instances running? Yes, we do need svchost.exe and no, we can’t uninstall it nor we need to. svchost.exe has a very important (critical) purpose within the Windows OS. Also, being able to handle multiple processes at once, you should see multiple instances of svchost.exe running on your computer and there is no need to alarm yourself, it’s a normal behavior. Also, many users confuse svchost.exe with scvhost.exe which is indeed a malware application, more specifically a Trojan Horse named W32/Agobot-S virus. This malware application allows intruders/attackers to access your computer and steal passwords
